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. 2020 Jan-Dec:35:1533317520939773.
doi: 10.1177/1533317520939773.

An Automated Approach to Examining Pausing in the Speech of People With Dementia

Rachel A Sluis  1 , Daniel Angus  2 , Janet Wiles  3 , Andrew Back  3 , Tingting Amy Gibson  3 , Jacki Liddle  3 , Peter Worthy  3 , David Copland  4 , Anthony J Angwin  4
Affiliations

An Automated Approach to Examining Pausing in the Speech of People With Dementia

Rachel A Sluis et al. Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Demen. 2020 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

Dementia is a common neurodegenerative condition involving the deterioration of cognitive and communication skills. Pausing in the speech of people with dementia is a dysfluency that may be used to signal conversational trouble in social interaction. This study aimed to examine the speech-pausing profile within picture description samples from people with dementia and healthy controls (HCs) within the DementiaBank database using the Calpy computational speech processing toolkit. Sixty English-speaking participants between the ages of 53 and 88 years (Mage = 67.43, SD = 8.33; 42 females) were included in the study: 20 participants with mild cognitive impairment, 20 participants with moderate cognitive impairment, and 20 HCs. Quantitative analysis shows a progressive increase in the duration of pausing between HCs, the mild dementia group, and the moderate dementia group, respectively.

Keywords: conversation; dementia; machine learning; pausing; trouble.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Mean pause duration in milliseconds (with standard errors). One-way ANCOVA significance value < .001, and post hoc pairwise significance is indicated as *P < .05, **P < .01. ANCOVA indicates analysis of covariance.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Pause duration as percentage of total recording (with SE). One-way ANCOVA significance value < .001, and post hoc pairwise significance is indicated as *P < .05, **P < .01. ANCOVA indicates analysis of covariance.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Number of pauses 2 seconds or greater (with standard errors). One-way ANCOVA significance value < .001, and post hoc pairwise significance is indicated as *P < .05, **P < .01. ANCOVA indicates analysis of covariance.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Mean phrase duration in milliseconds (with standard errors). One-way ANCOVA significance value = .002, and post hoc pairwise significance is indicated as *P < .05, **P < .01. ANCOVA indicates analysis of covariance.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Total speech duration in seconds (with standard errors). One-way ANCOVA significance value < .001, and post hoc pairwise significance is indicated as *P < .05, **P < .01. ANCOVA indicates analysis of covariance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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