Fundamental frequency patterns in cerebral palsied speech

Fundamental frequency (F-0) contours provide an acoustic measure that corre lates closely with speech intonation. Abnormal intonation patterns have bee n described as a common feature of dysarthric speech of various origins, in cluding cerebral palsy. However, acoustic descriptions of intonation in dys arthria associated with cerebral palsy are difficult to find. Hence a small exploratory investigation was conducted to describe fundamental frequency patterns of read sentences for three speakers with cerebral palsy and compa re them with patterns for normal speakers. Results showed that F-0 variatio n (as measured by normalized range of F-0) for two of the cerebral palsied speakers overlapped that for the normal speakers, and was marginally lower for one cerebral palsied speaker. Fundamental frequency contours for the ce rebral palsied speakers appeared to have characteristics that generally wer e different from the patterns for the normal speakers, and also were differ ent from each other. More systematic studies involving acoustic speech meas ures related to prosodic disturbance will be required to answer questions r aised by this study about the nature of intonation in cerebral palsy.