Effect of ‘Be Clear’ Treatment on Intelligibility in Adults with Post-Stroke Dysarthria: Acoustic-Perceptual Consequences

Abstract

Dysarthria is significantly prevalent in individuals with post-stroke etiology. Behavioral treatment remains the foundation of dysarthria treatment approaches. Clear speech is one recent compensatory treatment approach that has gained traction. The present study aimed to determine whether the ‘Be Clear’ treatment significantly improved speech intelligibility, formant centralization ratio (FCR), slopes of second formant transitions (F2 slope), vowel duration, speaking rates, and articulation rates in adults with post-stroke dysarthria. Ten Kannada-speaking participants in the age range of 30 to 66 years of age with post-stroke dysarthria were recruited for the present study. ‘Be Clear’ treatment was practiced over the duration of 16 one-hour sessions across 4 weeks. Participants demonstrated statistically significant improvements in word intelligibility and sentence intelligibility, FCR, F2 slope, vowel duration, speaking rates, and articulation rates following ‘Be Clear’ treatment. Future research could include other acoustic and perceptual measures to evaluate the efficacy of this treatment program on a larger sample size.