Spazi vocalici e intelligibilità nella Sindrome di Down

This study intends to verify the presence of a correlation between the size of vowel space and speech intelligibility. A reduced intelligibility is a common problem for those individuals suffering from dysarthria. Several vowel metrics, such as Vowel Space Area (VSA), Formant Centralization Ratio (FCR) or Vowel Articulation Index (VAI), have been recently employed to distinguish healthy from dysarthric speech. In this research we evaluated these parameters by comparing the speech of subjects with Down Syndrome to that of healthy control speakers. The experimental results proved that all vowel metrics are suitable acoustic predictors and can be taken as quantifiers of an impaired intelligibility.