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. 2019 Aug 9;28(3):1222-1232.
doi: 10.1044/2019_AJSLP-18-0275. Epub 2019 Jul 11.

Visual Analog Scale Ratings and Orthographic Transcription Measures of Sentence Intelligibility in Parkinson's Disease With Variable Listener Exposure

Defne Abur  1 , Nicole M Enos  2   3 , Cara E Stepp  1   3   4
Affiliations

Visual Analog Scale Ratings and Orthographic Transcription Measures of Sentence Intelligibility in Parkinson's Disease With Variable Listener Exposure

Defne Abur et al. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. .

Abstract

Purpose While orthographic transcription (OT) is the gold standard for measures of intelligibility, it is relatively inaccessible to clinicians. This study investigates the relationship between visual analog scale (VAS) ratings and OT measures of intelligibility for speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), with the eventual goal of developing more clinically feasible assessments of intelligibility. Method Twenty speakers with PD and 5 controls read 11 sentences. First, 33 listeners completed an OT task using 1 sentence from each speaker. An additional 33 listeners rated the intelligibility of 1 sentence from each speaker using a VAS, reflecting a minimized exposure VAS (MEV) task. Lastly, 14 additional listeners each rated the intelligibility of all 11 sentences produced by all speakers using a VAS, reflecting an extended exposure VAS (EEV) task. Smaller listener groups were simulated from each VAS task for comparison to scores from the OT task. Results There was a strong relationship between OT and both MEV and EEV. This relationship remained strong (R 2 ≥ .82) even when only 1 listener in MEV and 2 listeners in EEV were simulated per sentence. Conclusions VAS ratings may be a suitable alternative to OT measures of sentence intelligibility for PD using listeners with both minimal and extended exposure to the stimuli.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Number of listeners, number of sentences heard per listener, task completion time, and intrarater and interrater reliability are listed for each of the three study tasks with a schematic of the experiment setup.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Average transcription-based intelligibility scores compared to average visual analog scale (VAS)–based intelligibility scores for control speakers (open markers) and speakers with Parkinson's disease (solid markers) for the minimized exposure VAS (MEV; magenta triangles) task and extended exposure VAS (EEV; blue circles) task. The perfect agreement between transcription and VAS scores is represented by a gray dotted line.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
The strength of the relationship between the minimized exposure VAS (MEV; magenta triangles) task and extended exposure VAS (EEV; blue circles) task and the orthographic transcription scores shown as a function of simulated groups for number of listeners per sentence for MEV (varying from one to three listeners) and EEV (varying from one to 14 listeners) tasks. VA = visual analog scale.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
The percent deviation in average intelligibility estimates (red solid line) in relation to the average for all 14 listeners for the extended exposure visual analog scale task simulation. The black dotted line denotes the average percent change in intelligibility (7.06%) reported for speakers with a small sample of patients with Parkinson's disease pre- and post-Lee Silverman Voice Therapy therapy in Cannito et al. (2012).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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