Perception of foreign accent syndrome speech and its relation to segmental characteristics

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Abstract

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is an acquired neurogenic disorder characterized by altered speech that sounds foreign-accented. This study presents a British subject perceived to speak with an Italian (or Greek) accent after a brainstem (pontine) stroke. Native English listeners rated the strength of foreign accent and impairment they perceived in speech of the FAS subject, alongside that of two native English speakers and Italian, Greek, and French L2 speakers acting as controls. The FAS subject was perceived to be as foreign-sounding as the L2 control speakers, but was also perceived as mildly impaired. The FAS subject's own perception of accents was also explored and it was found that his ability to distinguish presence and absence of accent does not seem to be affected. The relationship between listeners' perceptions and features of the FAS speech is explored via correlational statistics and qualitative analysis. Impressionistic phonetic analysis, supplemented by acoustic analysis, confirmed a number of features consistent with a typical Italian (and also Greek) accent and the Italian and Greek L2 speakers. A pre-stroke and a post-stroke sample from the FAS subject were compared and the nature of post-stroke changes in segmental realizations is discussed.

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Derivation of auditory filter shapes from notched-noise data.

Brian R Glasberg, Brian Moore (1990)

A well established method for estimating the shape of the auditory filter is based on the measurement of the threshold of a sinusoidal signal in a notched-noise masker, as a function of notch width. To measure the asymmetry of the filter, the notch has to be placed both symmetrically and asymmetrically about the signal frequency. In previous work several simplifying assumptions and approximations were made in deriving auditory filter shapes from the data. In this paper we describe modifications to the fitting procedure which allow more accurate derivations. These include: 1) taking into account changes in filter bandwidth with centre frequency when allowing for the effects of off-frequency listening; 2) correcting for the non-flat frequency response of the earphone; 3) correcting for the transmission characteristics of the outer and middle ear; 4) limiting the amount by which the centre frequency of the filter can shift in order to maximise the signal-to-masker ratio. In many cases, these modifications result in only small changes to the derived filter shape. However, at very high and very low centre frequencies and for hearing-impaired subjects the differences can be substantial. It is also shown that filter shapes derived from data where the notch is always placed symmetrically about the signal frequency can be seriously in error when the underlying filter is markedly asymmetric. New formulae are suggested describing the variation of the auditory filter with frequency and level. The implication of the results for the calculation of excitation patterns are discussed and a modified procedure is proposed. The appendix list FORTRAN computer programs for deriving auditory filter shapes from notched-noise data and for calculating excitation patterns. The first program can readily be modified so as to derive auditory filter shapes from data obtained with other types of maskers, such as rippled noise.

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Clinical spectrum of pontine infarction. Clinical-MRI correlations.

Emre Kumral, Gamze Bayülkem, D Evyapan (2002)

We sought clinical and radiological findings of 150 consecutive patients with acute isolated pontine infarct who were admitted to our Stroke Unit over 6 years. In all patients CT, MRI and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) were performed during the hospitalization. On clinico-radiological analysis regarding the pontine lesion boundaries there were five main clinical patterns that depended on the constant territories of intrinsic pontine arteries: (1). anteromedial pontine syndrome (58%) presented with motor deficit with dysarthria, ataxia, and mild tegmental signs in one third of patients; (2). anterolateral pontine syndrome (17%) developed with motor and sensory deficits in half of the patients, and were associated with tegmental signs (56%) more frequently than the anteromedial infarct syndrome; (3). tegmental pontine syndrome (10%) presented with mild motor deficits and associated with sensory syndromes, eye movement disorders and vestibular system symptoms including vertigo, dizziness and ataxia; (4). bilateral pontine syndrome (11%) consisted with transient consciousness loss, tetraparesis and acute pseudobulbar palsy; (5). unilateral multiple pontine infarcts (4%) were rarely observed, and were always associated with severe sensory-motor deficits and tegmental signs. In our series, there was no infarct in the extreme dorsal and lateral tegmental pontine territories which have been mostly associated with cerebellar infarctions. The main etiology of stroke was basilar artery branch disease (BABD) in 59 patients (39%), followed by small-artery disease (SAD) in 31 (21%), large-artery disease of vertebrobasilar arteries in 27 patients (18%), cardioembolism in 12 (8%) and in 16 patients (11%) no cause of stroke was found. Our findings suggest that it is possible to identify clinical subgroups of pontine infarction, in which BABD and SAD were the most common causes of stroke. After an acute onset, outcome is in general excellent except in those with bilateral pontine lesions.