Table 2.

Primary and secondary dimensions used for rating the ataxic speech samples in this study. Primary dimensions were used to identify the presence of a speech abnormality. The secondary dimensions were used to further characterize abnormal speech. For the picture description task, intelligibility was used as an additional primary dimension as this task produced spontaneous rather than repeated speech.

Type of measures	Speech dimensions	Purpose
Primary dimensions	Articulation Rate Rhythm Speech prosody	To determine whether the speech samples show any impairment and to examine the area of speech difficulty.
Secondary dimensions	Irregular articulatory breakdown Imprecise consonants Distorted vowels Prolonged phonemes Excess and equal stress Excess loudness variation Hypernasality Voice tremor Harsh voice Breathy voice Strained-strangled voice	To determine detailed characteristics of speech samples that were judged as impaired.