EMA assessment of tongue-jaw co-ordination during speech in dysarthria following traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Primary objective: To investigate the spatio-timing aspects of tongue-jaw co-ordination during speech in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). It was hypothesized that both timing and spatial co-ordination would be affected by TBI.

Research design: A group comparison design wherein Mann-Whitney U-tests were used to compare non-neurologically impaired individuals with individuals with TBI.

Methods and procedures: Nine non-neurologically impaired adults and nine adults with TBI were involved in the study. Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) was used to track tongue and jaw movement during /t/ and /k/, embedded in sentence and syllable stimuli.

Main outcomes and results: Analysis of group data did not reveal a significant difference in spatio-timing tongue-jaw co-ordination between the control group and TBI group. On an individual basis, a proportion of individuals with TBI differed from non-neurologically impaired participants with regard to articulatory order and percentage of jaw contribution to /t/.

Conclusions: EMA assessment results supported perceptual data; those adults who presented with severe articulatory disturbances exhibited the most deviant spatio-timing tongue-jaw co-ordination patterns. This finding could provide a new and specific direction for treatment, directed at combined movement patterns.