Purpose In healthy speakers, the more frequent and probable a word is in its context, the shorter the word tends to be. This study investigated whether these probabilistic effects were similarly sized for speakers with dysarthria of different severities. Method Fifty-six speakers of New Zealand English (42 speakers with dysarthria and 14 healthy speakers) were recorded reading the Grandfather Passage. Measurements of word duration, frequency, and transitional word probability were taken. Results As hypothesized, words with a higher frequency and probability tended to be shorter in duration. There was also a significant interaction between word frequency and speech severity. This indicated that the more severe the dysarthria, the smaller the effects of word frequency on speakers' word durations. Transitional word probability also interacted with speech severity, but did not account for significant unique variance in the full model. Conclusions These results suggest that, as the severity of dysarthria increases, the duration of words is less affected by probabilistic variables. These findings may be due to reductions in the control and execution of muscle movement exhibited by speakers with dysarthria.

中文翻译：

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词频和词概率对构音障碍言语节奏的影响

目的对于健康的说话者来说，一个单词在其上下文中出现的频率和可能性越高，该单词就越短。这项研究调查了这些概率效应对于患有不同严重程度的构音障碍的说话者是否具有相似的大小。 方法记录了 56 名新西兰英语使用者（42 名患有构音障碍的使用者和 14 名健康使用者）朗读《祖父通道》的记录。对单词持续时间、频率和过渡词概率进行了测量。 结果正如假设的那样，频率和概率较高的单词的持续时间往往较短。词频和言语严重程度之间也存在显着的交互作用。这表明构音障碍越严重，词频对说话者词语持续时间的影响越小。过渡词概率也与语音严重性相互作用，但没有解释整个模型中显着的独特方差。 结论这些结果表明，随着构音障碍严重程度的增加，单词的持续时间受概率变量的影响较小。这些发现可能是由于患有构音障碍的说话者对肌肉运动的控制和执行能力下降所致。