Recent
studies on the remediation of speech disorders suggest that providing
visual information of speech articulators may contribute to improve
speech production. In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of an
illustration-based rehabilitation method on speech recovery of a patient
with non-fluent chronic aphasia. The Ultraspeech-player software
allowed visualization by the patient of reference tongue and lip
movements recorded using ultrasound and video imaging. This method can
improve the patient’s awareness of their own lingual and labial
movements, which can increase the ability to coordinate and combine
articulatory gestures. The effects of this method were assessed by
analyzing performance during speech tasks, the phonological processes
identified in the errors made during the phoneme repetition task and the
acoustic parameters derived from the speech signal. We also evaluated
cognitive performance before and after rehabilitation. The integrity of
visuospatial ability, short-term and working memory and some executive
functions supports the effectiveness of the rehabilitation method. Our
results showed that illustration-based rehabilitation technique
had a beneficial effect on the patient’s speech production, especially
for stop and fricative consonants which are targeted (high visibility of
speech articulator configurations) by the software, but also on reading
abilities. Acoustic parameters indicated an improvement in the
distinction between consonant categories: voiced and voiceless stops or
alveolar, post-alveolar and labiodental fricatives. However, the patient
showed little improvement for vowels. These results confirmed the
advantage of using illustration-based rehabilitation technique
and the necessity of detailed subjective and objective intra-speaker
evaluation in speech production to fully evaluate speech abilities.
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