The goal of this clinical trial is to learn about the effect of communicative interaction on verbal communication in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and age-matched speakers.
The question is, What are the effects of communicative interaction on verbal communication in people with ALS?
Participants will read words and sentences while they are in a solo setting and interactive setting.
diagnosis of ALS following the revised EL Escorial criteria
no history of other neurological conditions (e.g., stroke)
no cognitive impairment assessed by Telephone Montreal Cognitive Assessment (mini MoCA)
detectable speech disturbance according to the ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised (ALSFRS-R)
None - if volunteer meets the inclusion criteria, then they will be enrolled
Single group
Structured Communicative Interaction
BehavioralTwo interlocutors, one with ALS and a typical, unfamiliar interlocutor or an age-matched speaker and a typical interlocutor, will work together. On each trial, one of the interlocutors will be randomly chosen to be the "speaker" and the other will be the "listener". Each participant in the pair will view the same set of words on their screens. After one second, one of the words will be highlighted on the speaker's screen, they will say the word in the phrase "Click on the \_\_\_\_ this time", and the listener will click on it. After the listener has made their selection, both participants will receive feedback on trial success.
Clear Speech
BehavioralPALS and age-matched speakers will read critical words consisting of target segments (e.g., "hid", "ship", "net") in random order four times. These words will be embedded in the carrier phrase "Click on the \_\_\_ this time." Participations will be instructed to overenunciate the critical words.
Unstructured communicative interaction
BehavioralTwo interlocutors, one with ALS and a typical, unfamiliar interlocutor or an age-matched speaker and a typical interlocutor, will work together. The pairs will be presented with two different versions of the same picture with eight differences chosen to elicit the same target segments (e.g., "hid", "ship", "net"). These pictures will be modified from the LUCID corpus. In total, pairs will complete four picture sets per session. Pairs will be given 5 minutes for each picture set.
Clear Speech Structured Communicative Interaction
BehavioralTwo interlocutors, one with ALS and a typical, unfamiliar interlocutor or an age-matched speaker and a typical interlocutor, will work together. On each trial, one of the interlocutors will be randomly chosen to be the "speaker" and the other will be the "listener". Each participant in the pair will view the same set of words on their screens. After one second, one of the words will be highlighted on the speaker's screen, they will say the word in the phrase "Click on the \_\_\_\_ this time", and the listener will click on it. The speaker will be instructed to overenunciate the critical words. After the listener has made their selection, both participants will receive feedback on trial success.
Formant frequencies of speech sounds
Formant frequencies that characterize speech sounds will be made on speech recorded in the intervention task.
Intelligibility of recorded speech
Perceptual judgments will be provided by solo, naïve listeners who did not participate in the interactions. Listeners will hear recorded speech of PALS and age-matched speakers recorded across the different tasks and indicate what they heard. The score will be expressed in percent. The possible range is between 0-100%. The higher scores mean a better outcome.
Syntactic properties
Syntactic complexity in the unstructured communication task will be measured through mean length of grammatical units, clausal density, and clause type. Each variable will be assessed at both the dyadic level (e.g., clausal density for both interlocutors together) and at the level of the individual speaker (e.g., clausal density of each speaker). A composite of these measures will provide an index of the syntactic complexity of the conversation.
Pragmatic Properties
The investigators will count the number and duration of silent portions of speech, filled pauses, linguistic mazes, speaking turns, and interruptions in the unstructured communication task. A composite measure of the individual measures will provide an index of an individual's contribution to the conversation.
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