PURPOSE: To compare data found in auditory-perceptual analyses (subjective) and acoustic analyses (objective) in dysarthric patients. METHODS: Forty-two patients with well defined neurological diagnosis, 21 male and 21 female, were evaluated in auditory-perceptual parameters and acoustic measures. All patients had their voices recorded. Auditory-perceptual voice analyses were made considering type of voice, resonance (balanced, hipernasal or laryngopharyngeal), loudness (adequate, decreased or increased), pitch (adequate, low or high), vocal attack (isochronic, sudden or breathy), and voice stability (stable or unstable). Acoustic analyses were made with GRAM 5.1.7 Program that considered voice quality and spectrographic tracing, and Vox Metria Program to obtain objective measures. RESULTS: The comparison between auditory-perceptual and acoustic data showed no correlation for all the parameters analyzed. It was found a significant difference between breathiness and shimmer alteration (p=0.048), and between breathiness and harmonics definition (p=0.040), evidencing correlation between noise presence during emission and breathiness. CONCLUSION: Acoustic analysis associated to auditory-perceptual analysis provided different but complementary data, helping the clinical diagnosis of dysarthias.
Dysarthria; Voice disorders; Speech acoustics; Speech; Voice quality
