Transition characteristics in speakers with dysarthria and in healthy controls: Part IV: Additional data on vital capacity transitions and stroke patients.

Formant transitions are known to provide important cues for speech perception, sound identification, and inferences to articulatory behavior. This study describes and examines three types of formant transitions [consonant‐vowel (CV), vowel‐consonant (VC), and diphthong transitions] in four groups of speakers: healthy, ALS, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke. This is an extension from previous work by Weismer et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 3135 (2007)] and Weismer et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 124, 2558 (2008)], who showed shallower slopes for CV and diphthong transitions in persons with dysarthria (ALS and PD). To better understand the characteristics of the different transition types in healthy and disordered populations, two questions are addressed here. First, are CV transitions associated with dysarthria different from those in healthy speakers in a way comparable to the observed differences in diphthong transitions? Second, do VC transitions show the same normal characteristics, and are the differences ...