A Comparison of the Aids Sentence List and Spontaneous Speech Intelligibility Scores for Dysarthric Speech

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Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine whether the Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech (AIDS) (Yorkston & Beukelman, 1981) sentence scores are realistic indications of the spontaneous speech performance of dysarthric speakers. Twenty mild-to-moderately dysarthric subjects were tape-recorded during the AIDS sentence task, as well as for a spontaneous speech sample. Subsequently, each sample was transcribed by eight untrained judges. Four scores were obtained from each transcription. T-tests were used to determine if there were significant differences between the scores for the two tasks. The results showed that the percentage intelligibility of the AIDS sentences was significantly higher than that of spontaneous speech; indicating that the AIDS scores may not be representative of the speakers' natural speech intelligibility. The AIDS sentence and spontaneous speech scores — speaking rate, rate of intelligible speech, and communications efficiency ratio, were not significantly different. Reliability measures were higher for the AIDS test than for spontaneous speech. These results indicate that the AIDS test is useful for providing an objective measurement of dysarthric speech intelligibility, provided the results are interpreted with the factors affecting these scores in mind.

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