Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate information transmission abilities in community-dwelling older adults (aged 60–89 years) using a story retelling task, and to examine the effects of task presentation type (single auditory presentation, repeated auditory presentation, and concurrent pictorial cues), with the goal of informing the development of communication intervention strategies and standardized discourse assessment tools for older adults. Methods: Seventy-two older adults were classified by gender and age group (60s, 70s, 80s); each participant completed the same story retelling task under each of the three presentation conditions. Verbal productions were analyzed using information unit (IU) analysis, with total IU count and IU ratio computed as quantitative measures, and IU per minute and IU ratio per minute computed as measures of temporal efficiency. Results: Across both quantitative and temporal efficiency measures, women outperformed men in information transmission ability, and performance declined with increasing age. Among the three stimulus presentation conditions, the repeated auditory presentation condition yielded better performance than both single auditory presentation and concurrent pictorial cues in terms of information transmission volume and temporal efficiency. Conclusion: These findings indicate that story retelling performance in older adults varies according to task presentation type, with repeated auditory presentation proving most effective. These results highlight the importance of incorporating repeated presentation into both clinical intervention programs and discourse assessment tools developed for older adults.
Objectives: Discourse assessments are widely used in clinical settings to identify cognitive and linguistic impairments associated with normal aging and neurogenic communication disorders. Because richer spontaneous speech facilitates more reliable discourse analysis, effective methods for eliciting naturalistic language are needed. As the social roles of robots expand, their potential as tools for language and cognitive assessment has gained increasing attention. This study examined whether a conversational robot elicits greater discourse production and conversational engagement in older adults compared to a tablet and explored the clinical usability of robots as tools for discourse-based assessment. Methods: Fourteen healthy older adults participated in unstructured conversations on three daily topics with both a robot and a tablet. The robot incorporated non-verbal backchannel behaviors, such as nodding and facial expressions, and interacted with older adults using the ChatGPT model, while the tablet offered only verbal communication. Five linguistic measures were analyzed, including turn-taking frequency, total and mean utterances, and total and mean speech duration. Following each condition, participants completed a selfreport survey assessing usability and interaction experience. Results: Results showed that older adults produced significantly more total and mean utterances when interacting with the robot. Additionally, participants reported a greater sense of encouragement to engage with the robot. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the robot’s physical embodiment and interactive behaviors enhance conversational engagement, making it a clinically promising tool for eliciting spontaneous speech and collecting discourse data for language and cognitive assessment in aging populations.
Objectives: This study aimed to compare the story retelling and story generation skills of preschool children at risk for learning disabilities and typically developing peers in terms of macro- and microstructural narrative features. In addition, the study examined the relationships between children’s narrative performance and their verbal working memory and rapid automatized naming abilities. Methods: The study group consisted of 52 preschool children aged 60–72 months, including 26 identified as being at risk for learning disabilities and 26 typically developing children. A comparative and correlational research design was employed to examine group differences in narrative performance. Story retelling data were collected using the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You?, while story-generation data were obtained using Good Night, Gorilla. Macrostructural features were assessed using the Narrative Scoring Scheme, and microstructural features were analyzed using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Results: Children in the learning disability risk group demonstrated significantly lower macro- and microstructural performance in both story retelling and story generation compared to their typically developing peers. Moderate positive associations were observed between children’s verbal working memory and macrostructural narrative scores in both groups. In the typically developing group, verbal working memory was also associated with microstructural indicators such as lexical diversity and total word count. Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of narrative skills as a potential early indicator of risk for learning disabilities and support the inclusion of narrative-based assessments in early screening procedures.
Objectives: This study aimed to analyze articulation accuracy and error types in connected speech produced through a story retelling task by typically developing children aged 4 to 6. Furthermore, it investigated how articulation errors varied according to morpheme types and word positions within connected speech. Methods: The participants were 54 typically developing children aged 4–6 years. Data were collected using story retelling tasks (“The Swing Story” and “The Ball Story”) from the Korean Narrative Assessment (KONA). Children’s connected speech was phonetically transcribed and analyzed. The analysis measures included articulation accuracy, Percentage of Consonants Correct (PCC), Percentage of Vowels Correct (PVC), and articulation error types. Articulatory error rates were compared across morpheme types (grammatical vs. lexical) and word positions (initial onset, medial onset, medial coda, and final coda) to determine how these factors influence error distribution. Results: No significant differences were found in articulation accuracy across age groups in connected speech produced during the story retelling task. An analysis of error types revealed that omission and substitution occurred with relatively high frequency, and this trend was consistent across all ages. Articulatory error rates were higher in grammatical morphemes and the medial-onset position than in lexical morphemes and other word positions. Conclusion: The findings indicate that omission and substitution errors were relatively frequent, possibly reflecting increased utterance length and phonological complexity. Higher error rates in grammatical morphemes and the medial-onset position suggest that articulation performance is influenced not only by linguistic context but also by articulatory difficulty. Therefore, when evaluating children’s articulation abilities, it is essential to consider error types and linguistic conditions using structured connected speech tasks, such as story retelling, rather than relying solely on the single-word level.
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate differences in the types of speech production errors according to the levels of articulation severity in children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) and to examine the relationship between these error types and speech intelligibility. Methods: The participants were 36 children with spastic CP (20 boys, 16 girls) with a mean chronological age of 10.17 years. They were divided into three groups based on articulation severity: mild (n=12), moderate (n=9), and severe (n=15). The Assessment of Phonology & Articulation for Children (APAC) was administered, and speech production errors were classified as omission, substitution, distortion, prolongation, and non-speech errors. Speech intelligibility was analyzed as the percentage of words correctly understood by listeners. Results: The pattern of speech production errors differed significantly according to articulatory severity. Significant group differences were found in omission, prolongation, non-speech, and substitution errors, and the severe group showed significantly higher frequencies of omission and non-speech errors than other error types. Furthermore, withingroup analyses revealed that substitution was the predominant error type in the mild group, whereas substitution and omission were the major error types in the moderate group. In contrast, omission and non-speech errors were most prominent in the severe group, indicating that greater articulatory severity was associated with increased difficulty in consonant production and increased non-speech vocalizations. In addition, omission, prolongation, and non-speech errors showed significant negative correlations with intelligibility. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that omission and non-speech errors were the strongest predictors of intelligibility, even after controlling for articulatory severity. Conclusion: These findings suggest that intelligibility is influenced not only by severity but also by specific error types, particularly omission and non-speech errors, indicating the need to consider both factors in intervention.
Objectives: This study examined the construct validity and internal consistency of the Korean Parents’ Assessment of Cognitive/Language Knowledge (K-PACK), an instrument developed to assess parental knowledge of children’s cognitive and language development, through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Methods: Data from 636 parents of children aged 6 to 36 months (338 boys, 298 girls) were analyzed. Parents completed an initial 17-item version of the questionnaire online. Construct validity was examined through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω. Results: The findings supported an 11-item, two-factor structure of K-PACK. The two factors reflected the perceived importance of early environments and experiences and parents’ perceptions of media exposure in young children’s cognitive and language development. The theoretically proposed dimension related to malleability of intelligence did not emerge as an independent factor in the Korean sample. The final 11-item K-PACK demonstrated acceptable-to-good internal consistency (Cronbach’s a=.756; McDonald’s ω=.854). Conclusion: The findings support the reliability and construct validity of K-PACK while also indicating that the empirically derived factor structure does not fully align with the originally proposed theoretical dimensions. This suggests that parental beliefs and knowledge regarding early development may be structured differently across cultural contexts. K-PACK provides a psychometrically sound measure that may be useful for research on home language environments, parent-child interaction, and intervention outcomes.
Objectives: This study aimed to examine the preliminary effects of a camp-based English phonics group intervention on multiple domains of English literacy in Korean students with dyslexia learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and to explore the need for sustained support through additional individual intervention. Methods: A total of 17 elementary school students with dyslexia participated in a study with a pre-post design. All participants received a camp-based intensive English phonics group intervention delivered over four consecutive days, including 12 sessions of small-group instruction. In addition, a subset of students received 20 sessions of individual intervention following the camp, and changes in their performance were also examined. Outcome measures included expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, letter-name knowledge, letter–sound knowledge, phonological awareness, word reading, word dictation, and learning attitude and motivation toward English. Results: Following the group intervention, significant improvements were observed in expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, letter–sound knowledge, phonological awareness, word reading, word dictation, and learning attitude and motivation. Students who participated in the additional individual intervention demonstrated further significant gains in expressive vocabulary, letter–sound knowledge, phonological awareness, word reading, word dictation, and learning attitude and motivation. Conclusion: These findings suggest that a camp-based English phonics group intervention may support improvements in foundational English literacy skills and learning attitude in students with dyslexia. Furthermore, subsequent individual intervention may facilitate additional gains beyond those achieved through group intervention alone. This study provides preliminary clinical implications by suggesting an effective intervention model that links group and individual instruction to support English literacy development in Korean EFL students with dyslexia.
Objectives: This study investigated age-related differences in behavioral performance and prefrontal hemodynamic responses during noun, verb, and letter verbal fluency tasks (VFTs), with a particular focus on identifying task types and neural regions that are most sensitive to aging. Methods: Ten young adults and eleven cognitively healthy older adults completed noun, verb, and letter fluency tasks while prefrontal cortical activity was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Behavioral performance was quantified as the number of words generated. Hemodynamic responses (ΔHbO) were analyzed using permutation-based mixed-effects ANOVA. Stepwise discriminant analysis with permutation testing and bootstrapping was used to determine which fluency task best differentiated age groups. Correlations between behavioral performance and prefrontal activation were examined separately for each group. Results: Older adults generated fewer words than young adults across all fluency tasks, with noun fluency yielding higher output than verb and letter fluency in both groups. Discriminant analysis identified verb fluency as the strongest behavioral marker differentiating older and young adults. At the neural level, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activation was greater than anterior prefrontal activation across groups, but older adults exhibited significantly reduced ΔHbO responses in the VLPFC. Additionally, verb fluency performance was positively correlated with right VLPFC activation in the older group only. Conclusion: These findings indicate that verb fluency is particularly sensitive to age-related changes in lexical retrieval and that reduced engagement of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex characterizes verbal fluency performance in healthy aging.
Objectives: This study aimed to explore speech subtypes in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) based on acoustic, aerodynamic, and perceptual features and to identify whether the derived clusters could be interpreted as distinct speech subtypes. Methods: Forty-four individuals with PD participated in this study. Five acoustic/aerodynamic variables (pitch range, sound pressure level, mean airflow rate, speaking rate, and articulation rate) and four perceptual variables (overall speech intelligibility, loudness, speaking rate, and articulation accuracy) were included in the final cluster analysis. Perceptual ratings were obtained from five listeners using visual analog scales. Hierarchical clustering and kmeans clustering were performed based on standardized z-scores. Group differences were examined using one-way ANOVA, and effect sizes (η2) were calculated to determine the relative contribution of each variable. Listener-perceived speech subtype frequencies and background variables were also compared across clusters. Results: A three-cluster solution was identified. The clusters were labeled as Low loudness–slow rate type (LL-SR, n=14), Mild speech inefficiency type (MSI, n=24), and Fast rate–articulatory deficit type (FR-AD, n=6). Significant group differences were found across all nine variables. The variables with the largest effect sizes were overall speech intelligibility, articulation accuracy, loudness, and sound pressure level. Listener-perceived frequency analysis showed significant group differences in articulatory deficit frequency and mixed-group frequency. Among background variables, only sex differed significantly across clusters. Conclusion: Speech characteristics in PD appear to be heterogeneous and can be organized into three distinguishable subtypes. The final cluster structure was primarily differentiated along the dimensions of intelligibility, articulation, and loudness, suggesting the need for more individualized assessment and intervention approaches.
Objectives: Students with dyslexia experience difficulties in phonological, morphological, and orthographic processing, which may also affect their foreign language learning. This study aimed to compare these processing abilities in Korean and English between students with dyslexia and typically developing peers, and to examine performance patterns across groups and languages. Methods: A total of 36 students in Grades 5–6 participated, including 18 students with dyslexia and 18 typically developing students. Tasks assessing phonological processing (phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and phonological memory (PM)), morphological processing (compound morphological awareness (CMA), derivational morphological awareness (DMA), and inflectional morpheme awareness (IMA)), and orthographic processing (orthographic awareness (OA) and copying) were administered in both Korean and English. A two-way mixed ANOVA was conducted to analyze the effects of group and language. Results: Significant main effects of group and language were found in PA, RAN, PM, and IMA, whereas only the main effect of language was significant in OA. In contrast, significant interaction effects were observed in CMA, DMA, and copying, with a greater group gap in English. Conclusion: Phonological processing ability showed consistent group differences across languages, supporting its role as a core deficit in dyslexia, whereas morphological and orthographic processing abilities varied according to language characteristics and task demands. The larger group differences observed in English suggest that the weaknesses of students with dyslexia may become more pronounced in an English-as-a-foreign-language context. This study provides foundational data for understanding English processing abilities in Korean students with dyslexia and offers implications for developing English learning support strategies for these students.
Objectives: This study aimed to examine the relationship between biological temperament (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, social sensitivity, persistence) and communication competence (general language, vocabulary/semantic, social/pragmatic) of preschool children, and to explore the predictive effects of biological temperament on communication competence. Methods: The Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI 3-6) and communication competence assessments (The Preschool Receptive-Expressive Language Scale [PRES], The Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test [REVT], and the Children’s Pragmatic Language Checklist [CPLC]) were administered to 42 typically developing preschool children. For data analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, and stepwise multiple regression analysis were applied. Results: First, persistence was the strongest positive predictor for receptive language, receptive and expressive vocabulary, and pragmatic language domains (discourse management, contextual variation, and communication function). Second, novelty seeking had a significant negative effect on nonverbal communication, and harm avoidance had a significant negative effect on discourse management. Conclusion: The findings confirmed that children’s temperament - particularly goal-directed persistence, novelty seeking, and harm avoidance-differentially impacts the sub-domains of communication. This suggests that an individualized approach considering temperamental characteristics is essential during language education.
Objectives: Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) is a neurological condition often characterized by cognitive impairment, yet specific linguistic markers associated with this pathology remain under-investigated. This study analyzed the usage patterns of various fillers - specifically single fillers, multiple fillers, and the discourse marker ‘이제’ (now) - during a story recall task to identify linguistic and cognitive differences between patients with NPH and Healthy Elderly (HE) adults. Methods: The participants included 17 patients with NPH and 19 HE adults. Speech samples were elicited through a story recall task and subsequently analyzed based on three distinct cognitive-linguistic metrics: Event Sequencing (ES) score, Information Unit (IU) frequency, and Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). The occurrence rates of specific filler types were calculated and then standardized according to these metrics to ensure an accurate, multidimensional comparison. Between-group differences were analyzed to determine statistical significance, and correlations between these filler indices and K-MMSE–2 scores were examined. Results: When normalized by ES and IU, significant group differences were found exclusively in the usage of multiple fillers, with the NPH group demonstrating higher occurrence rates than the HE group. However, when normalized by MLU, the NPH group exhibited a higher occurrence rate for multiple fillers, whereas the HE group showed higher occurrence rates for single fillers and the discourse marker ‘이제’. Furthermore, a significant negative correlation was identified between the occurrence rate of multiple fillers and K-MMSE–2 scores. Conclusion: These findings suggest that repetitive filler patterns serve as a meaningful linguistic marker for cognitive decline in NPH patients.
Objectives: This study aimed to develop the Articulation Gesture Index (G-Index) and the Coherence Index (C-Index) to conduct a multi-dimensional analysis of difficulties in speech motor planning, and to verify the usefulness of these indices in describing the speech characteristics of patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH). Methods: A 30-word naming task was administered to 26 patients with NPH and 26 healthy elderly (HE) controls. Index values were calculated for each word, and we examined naming success rates, differences in index output scores and proximity rates between groups, and group classification accuracy. Results: Both the G-Index and the C-Index significantly influenced naming success rates. The NPH group exhibited significantly lower G-Index and C-Index output scores and proximity ratios compared to the HE group; the C-Index was found to more clearly demonstrate the difference between the two groups. The results confirmed that both the G-Index and C-Index, in terms of both output scores and proximity ratios, are meaningful measurement tools for classifying groups. Conclusion: Speech performance is influenced not only by the number of articulatory gestures but also by structural complexity such as inter-gesture cohesion. The proposed indices provide a useful framework for quantifying speech motor planning load and for characterizing speech production deficits in individuals with NPH.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a sequential and integrated intervention on children with severe speech sound disorders who exhibit speech inconsistency, phonological error patterns, and articulatory difficulties. All participants had achieved a certain level of speech consistency through prior intervention before the present study. Methods: Four children aged 3 to 5 years participated in this study. The intervention integrated a Metaphon-based approach with multisensory techniques to support both phonological awareness and speech production. Dependent variables included phoneme accuracy and proportion of whole-word correctness (PWC). Data were analyzed using single-subject design indicators, including level, trend, variability, percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND), and immediacy of effect. Results: All participants demonstrated overall improvements in phoneme accuracy and PWC following the intervention. Improvements in phoneme accuracy suggest that awareness of phonological contrasts was transferred to speech production. Increases in PWC indicate that changes at the phoneme level generalized to word-level production accuracy. These improvements were partially maintained during the maintenance phase. Conclusion: The findings indicate that a phonological intervention following the establishment of speech consistency can effectively improve both segmental accuracy and word-level production in children with severe speech sound disorders. The results support the clinical importance of a sequential intervention framework and highlight the effectiveness of integrating phonological and multisensory approaches for children with complex speech sound difficulties.
Objectives: This study investigated changes in speech characteristics across production phases during diadochokinetic (DDK) tasks to characterize speech motor features in Parkinson's disease (PD). Unlike previous research that focused primarily on overall speech rate, this study examines articulatory transition ability by measuring intersyllabic transition times across segmented task phases. Methods: Twenty PD patients and twenty age- and gender-matched healthy elderly (HE) adults performed DDK tasks. In addition to the syllable repetition rate, intersyllabic transition times were quantified and compared across the early, middle, and late phases of the task. Results: First, in the alternating motion rate (AMR) tasks, there were no significant differences in the syllable repetition rates between the two groups; however, both groups showed significantly higher repetition rates for /p alpha/ compared to /k alpha/. Second, the PD group exhibited significantly lower syllable repetition rates than the HE group in the sequential motion rate (SMR) task. Third, in the AMR task, there were no significant differences in intersyllabic transition times across phases between the two groups. Fourth, in the SMR task, the PD group exhibited significantly longer intersyllabic transition times than the HE group; furthermore, both groups showed longer transition times in the middle phase compared to the early and late phases. Conclusion: Although the two groups showed comparable performance in single-syllable repetition tasks, the PD group exhibited specific deficits in tasks requiring transitions between different syllables. These findings suggest that measuring intersyllabic transition times in diadochokinetic tasks constitutes an important indicator of speech motor features in patients with Parkinson's disease.
Objectives: To investigate the characteristics of hypokinetic dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD), we compared and analyzed changes in temporal and articulatory speech characteristics occurring during the early and late phases of a paragraph reading task. Methods: Twenty PD patients at Hoehn and Yahr stage 2 and 20 age-and gender-matched healthy elderly adults (HE) performed a paragraph reading task. The entire paragraph was divided into early and late sections. Temporal indicators (reading rate, articulation rate, pause ratio, pause frequency) and articulatory indicators (consonant accuracy, speech intelligibility) were calculated. Mixed ANOVA was used to verify differences between groups and phases. Results: The PD group exhibited significantly slower reading and articulation rates compared to the HE group. The PD group exhibited a significant increase in pause frequency toward the late phase, which can be interpreted as a result of worsening under-articulation due to motor fatigue from sustained speech production. Furthermore, while the HE group showed no difference in consonant accuracy between phases, the PD group demonstrated a significant decrease in consonant accuracy in the late phase. Conclusion: PD patients exhibited a characteristic decline in reading endurance, marked by increased pausing frequency and reduced consonant accuracy toward the end of paragraphs. This suggests that the reduced communication efficiency in PD patients stems from deficits in the motor maintenance ability required to sustain speech accuracy.Therefore, clinical practice should emphasize dynamic assessment observing performance changes based on fatigue levels and intervention approaches aimed at improving speech endurance.
Objectives: Semantic clustering is a memory strategy that enhances recall performance. The Ratio of Semantic Clustering (RSC) quantifies the use of this strategy, with a decline in RSC indicating episodic memory impairment. This study examines differences in recall accuracy and RSC in young adults, older adults, and individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in immediate (IMM) and delayed (DEL) recall conditions. Methods: Eighty participants (30 young adults, 42 older adults, and 8 individuals with AD) completed the Seoul Verbal Learning Test (SVLT), which consists of IMM and DEL recall tasks. Ancova was conducted to compare the accuracy and RSC across SVLT types (IMM, DEL). Pearson correlation analyses were performed for each group to examine the relationship between accuracy and RSC across recall conditions. Results: Individuals with AD showed lower recall accuracy in delayed recall compared to immediate recall. In contrast, young adults demonstrated increased recall accuracy and RSC in delayed recall, indicating greater use of semantic clustering strategies. Moreover, young adults exhibited strong positive correlations between recall accuracy and RSC across all recall tasks, whereas older adults showed significant correlations only in delayed recall. Conclusion: These findings suggest that strategic memory processes are relatively well-preserved in young adults, whereas the reduced use of semantic clustering in older adults and individuals with AD may indicate cognitive decline.
Objectives: Naming tasks are widely used to assess semantic memory and word retrieval abilities, and are considered a sensitive tool for detecting lexical deficits in Dementia of Alzheimer's Type (DAT). This study aimed to compare naming performance between healthy elderly adults and individuals with DAT, focusing on the effects of word frequency and cue type. In addition, response times and error patterns were analyzed to provide a more detailed understanding of lexical retrieval processes in both groups. Methods: Participants included 54 elderly adults (27 healthy and 27 with DAT). A picture naming task was administered, consisting of high- and low-frequency words. When participants failed to respond correctly, semantic or phonological cues were provided. Accuracy, response time, and error types were systematically analyzed. Results: Healthy elderly adults showed significantly higher accuracy and shorter response times than individuals with DAT. Both groups performed better on high-frequency words than on low-frequency words. After semantic cueing, healthy elderly adults exhibited greater performance improvement compared to the DAT group, whereas no significant group difference emerged after phonological cueing. In terms of error types, the DAT group produced a higher proportion of no-response errors, while both groups frequently exhibited semantic and visual errors. Conclusion: The findings highlight distinct lexical retrieval difficulties in DAT, particularly in the use of semantic cues and the tendency toward no-response errors. These results suggest that naming tasks can provide valuable clinical information for early detection of DAT and inform intervention strategies tailored to cueing methods.
Objectives: This study aims to establish large-scale normative data for vowel formant frequencies and speech intelligibility (SI) in healthy Korean adults, providing a critical resource for clinical and pedagogical applications in speech-language pathology and voice science. Methods: A comprehensive cross-sectional analysis of 4,235 healthy Korean adults across three distinct age groups was conducted. We systematically measured multiple acoustic variables including F1, F2, vowel space areas (VSA_3,VSA_4, VSA_5), Vowel Articulation Index, Formant Centralization Ratio, and F2 ratio using customized Praat scripts, and assessed subjective SI through perceptual measures to establish reliable baseline data. Results: Significant age-related differences were found in all variables except the F2 ratio (p= .14). Significant sex-based differences were confirmed for all variables except the F1 of /o/ (p= .327). All acoustic metrics correlated significantly with SI, with VSA_5 demonstrating the highest correlation among all vowel space metrics (r=-.56, p < .01), suggesting its potential clinical utility as a complementary objective measure for speech assessment. Conclusion: This study provides robust, large-scale normative data confirming that age and sex significantly influence Korean vowel acoustics, with older age groups showing notable reductions in VSA and SI. Among the acoustic metrics examined, VSA_5 showed the strongest correlation with perceived speech intelligibility, indicating its potential as a meaningful objective complement to subjective SI assessment. These findings may offer a practical reference for clinicians in voice assessment, differential diagnosis, and monitoring rehabilitation progress in individuals with speech and voice disorders.
Objectives: This study aimed to examine the effects of emotional valence (positive or negative) in contextual sentences on non-word learning in older adults. Specifically, it sought to determine whether emotional context could sensitively reflect cognitive differences between older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and cognitively healthy controls. The study further explored the potential of emotion-based learning tasks as tools for early detection and intervention in cognitive decline. Methods: Thirty-one Korean-speaking older adults (15 with MCI, 16 cognitively healthy controls) participated in the study. Participants were asked to infer the meanings of non-words embedded in emotionally valenced sentences and to judge whether the non-words matched the meanings of actual words. Accuracy and reaction time were recorded as primary measures of performance. Results: The MCI group showed overall lower accuracy and slower responses compared to the control group.The control group demonstrated higher accuracy in positive contexts, while the MCI group showed minimal performance differences across emotional contexts. In the control group, greater accuracy was associated with faster reaction times, suggesting efficient cognitive processing. In contrast, in the MCI group, working memory was significantly related to task performance only in negative contexts. Accuracy in positive contexts was the key variable distinguishing the two groups. Conclusion: Positive emotional context appears to facilitate non-word learning and serves as a sensitive marker for early cognitive decline. These findings highlight the potential of emotion-based language tasks for early screening and intervention in aging populations.
