Lingfeng Xu, Kewei Chen, Kimberly D Mueller, Julie Liss, Visar Berisha
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been recognized as a possible precursor to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recent research focusing on connected speech has uncovered various features strongly correlated with MCI due to AD and related dementias. Despite these advancements, the impact of early cognitive decline on articulatory precision has not been thoroughly investigated.
Objective: This study introduced the phoneme log-likelihood ratio (PLLR) to assess the articulatory precision of speakers across different cognitive status levels and compared its effectiveness to existing well-studied acoustic features.
Methods: The study utilized speech recordings from a picture description task, which included data from 324 cognitively unimpaired participants with low amyloid-β burden (CU, Aβ()), 47 cognitively unimpaired participants with high amyloid-β burden (CU, Aβ()), 69 participants with MCI, and 20 participants with dementia. Nine acoustic features were extracted from the speech recordings, covering three categories: speech fluency, speech pace, and articulatory precision. Welch's -test and Hedge's were adopted to assess their discriminative ability.
Results: A reduction in speech fluency and pace was observed among participants in the MCI and dementia groups. The PLLR shows large effect sizes in distinguishing between cognitively unimpaired participants with low Aβ burden and those diagnosed with MCI or dementia. Additionally, the test-retest reliability experiment indicated moderate repeatability of the features under study.
Conclusions: The study reveals PLLR as a sensitive indicator capable of detecting subtle articulatory variations across groups, while also providing further support for the association between reduced articulatory precision and early cognitive decline.
背景:轻度认知障碍(MCI)已被认为是阿尔茨海默病(AD)的可能前兆。最近对连接语音的研究发现了与AD和相关痴呆引起的MCI密切相关的各种特征。尽管有这些进步,早期认知能力下降对发音精度的影响还没有得到彻底的研究。目的:本研究引入音素对数似然比(PLLR)来评估不同认知状态下说话者的发音精度,并将其与已有的声学特征进行比较。方法:研究利用图片描述任务的语音记录,其中包括324名低淀粉样蛋白-β负担(CU, a β(-))的认知未受损参与者,47名高淀粉样蛋白-β负担(CU, a β(+))的认知未受损参与者,69名MCI参与者和20名痴呆参与者的数据。从语音记录中提取9个声学特征,包括语音流畅度、语音节奏和发音精度三类。采用Welch’st检验和Hedge’s g检验来评估他们的辨别能力。结果:在MCI和痴呆组的参与者中观察到语言流畅性和语速的降低。PLLR在区分低Aβ负担的认知未受损参与者和被诊断为轻度认知障碍或痴呆的参与者方面显示出很大的效应值。此外,重测信度实验表明,所研究的特征具有中等的可重复性。结论:该研究揭示了PLLR是一个敏感的指标,能够检测群体间细微的发音变化,同时也为发音精度降低与早期认知能力下降之间的关联提供了进一步的支持。
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Alzheimer''s Disease (JAD) is an international multidisciplinary journal to facilitate progress in understanding the etiology, pathogenesis, epidemiology, genetics, behavior, treatment and psychology of Alzheimer''s disease. The journal publishes research reports, reviews, short communications, hypotheses, ethics reviews, book reviews, and letters-to-the-editor. The journal is dedicated to providing an open forum for original research that will expedite our fundamental understanding of Alzheimer''s disease.