Speech timing in Thai left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals

An acoustic analysis of syllable duration in short Thai phrases was conduct ed to evaluate the effects of focal brain damage on the control of speech t iming. Almost all 35 of the subjects had participated in each of four previ ous companion studies: 13 left-brain-damaged (6 nonfluent aphasics; 7 fluen t aphasics), 14 right-brain-damaged patients, and 8 normal controls. Somewh at surprisingly, results revealed relatively normal timing patterns in 3 sy llable phrases in all subject groups. A comparison of the current study and the four others, however, led us to conclude that Thai-speaking nonfluent aphasics exhibit a speech timing deficit regardless of the linguistic level of representation, whereas timing deficits in fluent aphasics appear to be restricted to units larger than a syllable. Speech timing, on the other ha nd, appears to be intact across the board in right-brain-damaged individual s. Findings are brought to bear on theories of temporal control in brain-da maged patients.