Title: A pilot study of listening fatigue: Impacts of pediatric dysarthria on adult listeners
Legend: Scatter plot of listening fatigue ratings and single-word intelligibility scores grouped by dysarthria status of child speakers.
Citation: Jennifer U. Soriano, M.S., Tristan J. Mahr, Ph.D., Paul J. Rathouz, Ph.D., & Katherine C. Hustad, Ph.D., A pilot study of listening fatigue: Impacts of pediatric dysarthria on adult listeners. (in press) American Journal of Speech Language Pathology
Abstract: Purpose: We sought to characterize fatigue of adults when listening to speech of children with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: 57children with CP (19 without dysarthria and 38 with dysarthria) produced single-word and multi-word speech samples. 114 adult listeners completed transcription intelligibility tasks and provided listening fatigue ratings. Multi-word utterances were analyzed in terms of speech rate and communication efficiency. Results: Intraclass correlations showed large individual differences for listening fatigue ratings. Pearson correlations showed negative relationships between listening fatigue and intelligibility; however, the magnitude varied depending upon utterance length and dysarthria status of child speakers. T-test showed that listeners of children with dysarthria had higher fatigue ratings than listeners of children without dysarthria. Listeners of children with dysarthria were more fatigued following multi-word utterances than single-word utterances. Best subset regression showed that the combined effect of dysarthria status, intelligibility, and speech rate best explained listening fatigue of adult listeners. Conclusions: Listeners had increased levels of fatigue when they heard dysarthric speech relative to non-dysarthric speech. The needs of both speaker and listener should be considered when supporting children with CP and dysarthria to achieve successful communication.
Slide Author: Jennifer U. Soriano, MS
Investigator: Katherine C. Hustad, PhD
About the Lab: Katherine Hustad is Professor and Chair of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Her research examines speech and language development in children with cerebral palsy, with a focus on improving treatment decision-making, clinical outcomes, and quality of life. Visit the Wisconsin Intelligibility, Speech, and Communication (WISC) Lab for more information.
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