Department of Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics and Sociolinguistics, Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
Department of Applied Linguistics and Phonetics, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2020;34(4):339-356. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2019.1645885. Epub 2019 Jul 25.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease which, in addition to affecting motor and cognitive functions, may involve language disorders. Despite the importance of speech and language disorders in the quality of life of patients, there are only a few studies about language and speech production difficulties in MS. The aim of this research is to describe the limitation patterns of speech and temporal characteristics of the suprasegmental level in two SPMS cases related to various types of spontaneous speech tasks. We assumed the change of the cognitive load has a greater effect on spontaneous speech in MS patients than in controls. Two SPMS patients, and two sex-, age- and education matched healthy controls were studied. We applied verbal fluency tests (phonemic, episodic, semantic, verb), digit span test, non-word repetition test, Corsi Block Tapping Test, Stroop Colour and Word Test, and Trail Making Test. Token Test was used to measure speech comprehension. The four speech tasks required relatively different degrees of cognitive effort: (a) spontaneous narrative about own life; (b) event description; (c) picture description; (d) narrative recall. Our results show that there are differences between MS patients and controls: MS patients produced slower speech and articulation rate, and they had more and longer pauses in every speech task. Speech tasks and the degree of the cognitive load had a greater effect on MS patients than on control speakers.
多发性硬化症(MS)是一种慢性炎症性疾病,除了影响运动和认知功能外,还可能涉及语言障碍。尽管言语和语言障碍对患者的生活质量很重要,但关于多发性硬化症患者的语言和言语产生困难的研究很少。本研究旨在描述与各种自发言语任务相关的两个 SPMS 病例的言语受限模式和超音段水平的时间特征。我们假设认知负荷的变化对 MS 患者的自发言语有更大的影响,而不是对对照者的影响。我们研究了两名 SPMS 患者和两名性别、年龄和教育程度相匹配的健康对照者。我们应用了语音流畅性测试(语音、情节、语义、动词)、数字跨度测试、非单词重复测试、Corsi 块敲击测试、Stroop 颜色和单词测试、以及追踪测试。令牌测试用于测量言语理解。四项言语任务需要不同程度的认知努力:(a)自发叙述自己的生活;(b)事件描述;(c)图片描述;(d)叙事回忆。我们的结果表明,MS 患者和对照组之间存在差异:MS 患者在每个言语任务中产生的言语速度和发音速度较慢,并且停顿的次数更多,时间更长。言语任务和认知负荷的程度对 MS 患者的影响大于对对照者的影响。