Gemma Moya-Galé

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Assistant) at Teachers College

Purpose Social isolation is a common consequence of Parkinson's disease (PD), and social prescribing has become a crucial aspect for fostering well-being in this population. In fact, group work has been shown to improve levels of social connectedness in older adults across different domains. Increased technology use in older adults may also contrib...

Purpose The purpose of this technical report is to (a) describe the development and pilot testing of a university training initiative for graduate students in speech-language pathology to conduct online support groups for care partners of individuals with acquired brain injuries and (b) share preliminary data on students' self-efficacy in their cou...

Purpose The primary objective of this study was to explore the effects of intensive voice-focused treatment on speech parameters in Spanish speakers with dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) as perceived by naïve listeners. Method Fifteen Spanish speakers with dysarthria associated with PD received the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment...

Purpose Ten years after Miller and Lowit's (2014) groundbreaking book providing a cross-linguistic perspective on motor speech disorders, we ask where we are regarding dysarthria treatment across languages in two specific populations: adults with Parkinson's disease (PD) and children with cerebral palsy (CP). Method In this commentary, we consider...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to raise awareness about the importance of diverting from English-centric approaches in the management of dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) in the United States, and embracing a language- and culture-specific perspective when working with linguistically and culturally diverse populations with...

In this commentary, we collectively examine a recent article titled “Effectiveness of Intense Accent Modification Training with Refugees from Burma” by Burda et al.(2022). Whilst our response is aimed at revealing the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of Burda et al., it will also expose the raciolinguistic ideologies in accent modificati...

Purpose Limited research has examined the suitability of crowdsourced ratings to measure treatment effects in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), particularly for constructs such as voice quality. This study obtained measures of reliability and validity for crowdsourced listeners' ratings of voice quality in speech samples from a published stud...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine selected baseline acoustic features of hypokinetic dysarthria in Spanish speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and identify potential acoustic predictors of ease of understanding in Spanish. Method Seventeen Spanish-speaking individuals with mild-to-moderate hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to PD a...

Purpose: This commentary describes the development of global partnerships, capacity-building, and the basis for the creation of a website (Leadersproject.org) used throughout the world that contains free educational resources for the assessment and treatment of people with communication disabilities (PWCD). This website contains speech-language ass...

Background: Most individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) experience a degradation in their speech intelligibility. Research on the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) to assess intelligibility is still sparse, especially when trying to replicate communication challenges in real-life conditions (ie, noisy backgrounds). Developing technologies...

Purpose Little is known about the use of nonspeech oral motor exercises (NSOMEs) to treat Speech Sound Disorders (SSDs) in low- and middle-income countries, such as Guatemala, where the field of speech-language pathology is less well established. The purpose of this study is to examine clinical practices for SSDs in Guatemala. The authors then comp...

BACKGROUND Most individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience a degradation in their speech intelligibility. Research on the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) to assess intelligibility is still sparse, especially when trying to replicate communication challenges in real-life conditions (i.e., noisy backgrounds). Developing technologi...

Objectives The majority of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience voice and speech problems during the course of the disease. Despite the importance of voice quality in communication and the documented disordered voice quality in PD, few studies have explored the effects of speech treatment on this variable. Study Design/Methods A pa...

Conocer las bases de la intervención logopédica es clave para que la puesta en práctica tenga resultados positivos. La organización de un plan de intervención, la interpretación y redacción de informes,el trabajo con otros equipos profesionales y agentes implicados, así como el conocimiento de los recursos necesarios para la intervención logopédica...

Cuando se lleva a cabo una intervención logopédica, sea cual sea el área de trabajo, hay que tener en cuenta que existen diferentes programas, técnicas, tratamientos y diseños de intervención específicos que se han creado para tratar y mejorar aspectos relativos a la voz, el habla, el lenguaje, la deglución o la comunicación. Hay que asegurarse de...

The sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has significantly advanced in the past decade. However, the observed unpredictability and variability of AI behavior in noisy signals is still underexplored and represents a challenge when trying to generalize AI behavior to real-life environments, especially for people with a speech d...

Background: Although a number of international cleft organizations and cleft professionals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have built and supported comprehensive cleft care and speech therapy models to address the shortage of speech services in LMICs, the specific speech needs of individuals with cleft lip and palate (CLP) in such coun...

Purpose This study examined the effects of Speech Intelligibility Treatment (SIT) on intelligibility and naturalness of narrative speech produced by francophone children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy. Method Ten francophone children with dysarthria were randomized to one of two treatments, SIT or Hand–Arm Bimanual Intensive Therapy Includi...

A 36-year-old female with severe spastic dysarthria participated in this study. She received 4 weeks of individual, intensive voice-focused treatment. Voice recordings were conducted at three baseline points, immediately posttreatment, and at a 4-month follow-up. The primary outcome variables were selected acoustic measures of vocal function: sound...

Purpose Parkinson's disease (PD) is a multifaceted condition characterized by motor and nonmotor symptoms that greatly reduce individuals' quality of life. Although treatment models in speech therapy have traditionally focused on a monodisciplinary approach, benefits from allied health care have been reported for over a decade. The purpose of this...

Background More than 6,000,000 individuals worldwide are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD). Nearly 90% develop speech signs that may substantially impair their speech intelligibility, resulting in losses in their communication and quality of life. Benefits of intensive speech treatment have been documented for a range of speech signs. However...

This study aimed to examine self-efficacy as graduate students gained clinical skills during an intensive international cleft lip and palate (CLP) clinical practicum. A total of 17 graduate students in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program at Teachers College (TC), Columbia University, participated in a CLP clinical practicum for 5 days...

Background: Articulatory excursion and vocal intensity are reduced in many children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP), contributing to the children's intelligibility deficits and negatively affecting their social participation. However, the effects of speech-treatment strategies for improving intelligibility in this population are underst...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of intensive speech treatment on the conversational intelligibility of Castilian Spanish speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), as well as on the speakers' self-perceptions of disability. Method Fifteen speakers with a medical diagnosis of PD participated in this study. Speech recording...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of intensive speech treatment on the conversational intelligibility of Castilian Spanish speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), as well as on the speakers' self-perceptions of disability. Method: Fifteen speakers with a medical diagnosis of PD participated in this study. Speech recor...

Children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP) present with decreased vowel space area and reduced word intelligibility. Although a robust relationship exists between vowel space and word intelligibility, little is known about the intelligibility of vowels in this population. This exploratory study investigated the intelligibility of American...

Clear speech is an intelligibility-enhancing mode of speech that increases identification accuracy in various listening populations (e.g., Picheny, Durlach, & Braida, 1986). Children identify words more accurately in clear-speech than in conversational-speech sentences in noise (Bradlow, Kraus, & Hayes, 2003). At the segmental level, adults identif...