scholarly journals Quick compensatory mechanisms for tongue posture stabilization during speech production

2020 ◽  
Vol 123 (6) ◽  
pp. 2491-2503
Author(s):  
Takayuki Ito ◽  
Andrew Szabados ◽  
Jean-Loup Caillet ◽  
Pascal Perrier
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Compensatory Mechanisms ◽  
Compensatory Response ◽  
Reflex Mechanism ◽  
Mathematical Simulations ◽  
Tongue Position ◽  
Posture Stabilization

This study presents evidence of quick compensatory mechanisms in tongue motor control for speech production. The tongue posture is controlled not in relation to a specific tongue position, but to the shape of the tongue contour to achieve specific speech sounds. Modulation of compensatory responses due to task demands and mathematical simulations support the idea that the quick compensatory response is driven by a reflex mechanism.

Speech Modification by a Deaf Child through Dynamic Orometric Modeling and Feedback

1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel G. Fletcher ◽  
Akira Hasegawa
Keyword(s):  
Training Program ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Deaf Child ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Jaw Movements ◽  
Contact Patterns ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Tongue Position ◽  
Feedback Program

Baseline physiologic, acoustic, and phonetic data are presented to characterize speech production of 3 ½-year-old deaf girl prior to a visual articulatory modeling and feedback program. These observations suggest that she used an articulatory strategy based on visual information about lip and jaw movements rather than tongue positions as a primary means of differentiating speech sounds. The training program which followed used instrumentally generated displays of tongue position and movements to teach production of the /i/ and /a/ vowels in single and bisyllable word contexts. Linguapalatal contact patterns for the consonant /t/ were then introduced and taught in combinations with the vowels. Goal articulatory gestures were learned rapidly with respect to both positional and timing features of speech.

Coarticulation as an Indicator of Speech Motor Control Development in Children: An Ultrasound Study

Motor Control ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Zharkova ◽  
Nigel Hewlett ◽  
William J. Hardcastle
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Speech Motor Control ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Speaker Variability ◽  
Ultrasound Study ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Children's Speech ◽  
Speech Motor

There are still crucial gaps in our knowledge about developmental paths taken by children to adult-like speech motor control. Mature control of articulators during speaking is manifested in the appropriate extent of coarticulation (the articulatory overlap of speech sounds). This study compared lingual coarticulatory properties of child and adult speech, using ultrasound tongue imaging. The participants were speakers of Standard Scottish English, ten adults and ten children aged 6–9 years. Consonant-vowel syllables were presented in a carrier phrase. Distances between tongue curves were used to quantify coarticulation. In both adults and children, vowel pairs /a/-/i/ and /a/-/u/ significantly affected the consonant, and the vowel pair /i/-/u/ did not. Extent of coarticulation was significantly greater in the children than in the adults, providing support for the notion that children’s speech production operates with larger units than adults’. More within-speaker variability was found in the children than in the adults.

scholarly journals Cerebellar Dysfunction in Adults with Prader Willi Syndrome

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (15) ◽  
pp. 3320
Author(s):  
Laura Blanco-Hinojo ◽  
Laia Casamitjana ◽  
Jesus Pujol ◽  
Gerard Martínez-Vilavella ◽  
Susanna Esteba-Castillo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Motor Function ◽  
Motor Coordination ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Functional Mobility ◽  
Prader Willi Syndrome ◽  
Pathophysiological Mechanism ◽  
Motor Tasks ◽  
Correlation Pattern ◽  
Motor Processing

Severe hypotonia during infancy is a hallmark feature of Prader Willi syndrome (PWS). Despite its transient expression, moto development is delayed and deficiencies in motor coordination are present at older ages, with no clear pathophysiological mechanism yet identified. The diverse motor coordination symptoms present in adult PWS patients could be, in part, the result of a common alteration(s) in basic motor control systems. We aimed to examine the motor system in PWS using functional MRI (fMRI) during motor challenge. Twenty-three adults with PWS and 22 matched healthy subjects participated in the study. fMRI testing involved three hand motor tasks of different complexity. Additional behavioral measurements of motor function were obtained by evaluating hand grip strength, functional mobility, and balance. Whole brain activation maps were compared between groups and correlated with behavioral measurements. Performance of the motor tasks in PWS engaged the neural elements typically involved in motor processing. While our data showed no group differences in the simplest task, increasing task demands evoked significantly weaker activation in patients in the cerebellum. Significant interaction between group and correlation pattern with measures of motor function were also observed. Our study provides novel insights into the neural substrates of motor control in PWS by demonstrating reduced cerebellar activation during movement coordination.

scholarly journals Consistency influences altered auditory feedback processing

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (10) ◽  
pp. 2371-2379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias K Franken ◽  
Daniel J Acheson ◽  
James M McQueen ◽  
Peter Hagoort ◽  
Frank Eisner
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Auditory Feedback ◽  
Speech Motor Control ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Feedback Processing ◽  
Motor Commands ◽  
Consistent Condition ◽  
Consistency Effect ◽  
Speech Motor

Previous research on the effect of perturbed auditory feedback in speech production has focused on two types of responses. In the short term, speakers generate compensatory motor commands in response to unexpected perturbations. In the longer term, speakers adapt feedforward motor programmes in response to feedback perturbations, to avoid future errors. The current study investigated the relation between these two types of responses to altered auditory feedback. Specifically, it was hypothesised that consistency in previous feedback perturbations would influence whether speakers adapt their feedforward motor programmes. In an altered auditory feedback paradigm, formant perturbations were applied either across all trials (the consistent condition) or only to some trials, whereas the others remained unperturbed (the inconsistent condition). The results showed that speakers’ responses were affected by feedback consistency, with stronger speech changes in the consistent condition compared with the inconsistent condition. Current models of speech-motor control can explain this consistency effect. However, the data also suggest that compensation and adaptation are distinct processes, which are not in line with all current models.

scholarly journals Measuring Prospective Motor Control in Action Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna M. Gottwald
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Motor Development ◽  
Motion Tracking ◽  
Peak Velocity ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Fixed Time ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Kinematic Measures ◽  
Movement Unit

This article critically reviews kinematic measures of prospective motor control. Prospective motor control, the ability to anticipatorily adjust movements with respect to task demands and action goals, is an important process involved in action planning. In manual object manipulation tasks, prospective motor control has been studied in various ways, mainly using motion tracking. For this matter, it is crucial to pinpoint the early part of the movement that purely reflects prospective (feed-forward) processes, but not feedback influences from the unfolding movement. One way of defining this period is to rely on a fixed time criterion; another is to base it flexibly on the inherent structure of each movement itself. Velocity—as one key characteristic of human movement—offers such a possibility and describes the structure of movements in a meaningful way. Here, I argue for the latter way of investigating prospective motor control by applying the measure of peak velocity of the first movement unit. I further discuss movement units and their significance in motor development of infants and contrast the introduced measure with other measures related to peak velocity and duration.

scholarly journals Timing in talking: what is it used for, and how is it controlled?

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1658) ◽  
pp. 20130395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Turk ◽  
Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Control ◽  
Motor Control ◽  
Control Theory ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Optimal Control Theory ◽  
Interval Duration ◽  
Timing Control ◽  
Speech Timing ◽  
Rate Of Speech ◽  
Prosodic Structures

In the first part of the paper, we summarize the linguistic factors that shape speech timing patterns, including the prosodic structures which govern them, and suggest that speech timing patterns are used to aid utterance recognition. In the spirit of optimal control theory, we propose that recognition requirements are balanced against requirements such as rate of speech and style, as well as movement costs, to yield (near-)optimal planned surface timing patterns; additional factors may influence the implementation of that plan. In the second part of the paper, we discuss theories of timing control in models of speech production and motor control. We present three types of evidence that support models of speech production that involve extrinsic timing. These include (i) increasing variability with increases in interval duration, (ii) evidence that speakers refer to and plan surface durations, and (iii) independent timing of movement onsets and offsets.

Characteristics of Speech Production after Tracheoesophageal Puncture

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Robbins ◽  
John Christensen ◽  
Gail Kempster
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Voice Production ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Tracheoesophageal Puncture ◽  
Offset Time

Voice onset time (VOT) and vowel duration characteristics of speakers following the Singer-Blom technique of tracheoesophageal puncture (1980) were compared to those of traditional esophageal and laryngeal speakers. Fifteen subjects in each of the three speaker groups produced the words /pik/, /kup/, and /kup/ in a carrier phrase while audio recordings were obtained. Broadband spectrograms were made of the consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) utterances and vowel duration and VOT were measured. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures revealed that the tracheoesophageal speakers produced significantly shorter VOTs and longer vowel durations than the laryngeal speakers. However, the longer vowel durations for the traeheoesophageal speakers were not completely accounted for by the shorter VOTs found for that group. Spectrographic examination suggests that delayed voice offset time for the tracheoesophageal speakers also contributes to their longer vowel durations. Overall findings indicate that the physical characteristics and motor control properties of the neoglottis, even when driven by pulmonary air as in tracheoesophageal speakers, exert a major influence on alaryngeal voice production.

scholarly journals First validation of a novel assessgame quantifying selective voluntary motor control in children with upper motor neuron lesions

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey W. Keller ◽  
Julia Balzer ◽  
Annina Fahr ◽  
Jan Lieber ◽  
Urs Keller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Motor Neuron ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Compensatory Mechanisms ◽  
Involuntary Movements ◽  
Clinical Assessments ◽  
Voluntary Motor ◽  
Outcome Score ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Neurologically Intact

AbstractThe question whether novel rehabilitation interventions can exploit restorative rather than compensatory mechanisms has gained momentum in recent years. Assessments measuring selective voluntary motor control could answer this question. However, while current clinical assessments are ordinal-scaled, which could affect their sensitivity, lab-based assessments are costly and time-consuming. We propose a novel, interval-scaled, computer-based assessment game using low-cost accelerometers to evaluate selective voluntary motor control. Participants steer an avatar owl on a star-studded path by moving the targeted joint of the upper or lower extremities. We calculate a target joint accuracy metric, and an outcome score for the frequency and amplitude of involuntary movements of adjacent and contralateral joints as well as the trunk. We detail the methods and, as a first proof of concept, relate the results of select children with upper motor neuron lesions (n = 48) to reference groups of neurologically intact children (n = 62) and adults (n = 64). Linear mixed models indicated that the cumulative therapist score, rating the degree of selectivity, was a good predictor of the involuntary movements outcome score. This highlights the validity of this assessgame approach to quantify selective voluntary motor control and warrants a more thorough exploration to quantify changes induced by restorative interventions.

Situationally independent prosodic phrasing

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari R. Speer ◽  
Paul Warren ◽  
Amy J. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
American Midwest ◽  
The Impact

AbstractA series of speech production and categorization experiments demonstrates that naïve speakers and listeners reliably use correspondences between prosodic phrasing and syntactic constituent structure to resolve standing and temporary ambiguity. Materials obtained from a co-operative gameboard task show that prosodic phrasing effects (e.g., the location of the strongest break in an utterance) are independent of discourse factors that might be expected to influence the impact of syntactic ambiguity, including the availability of visual referents for the meanings of ambiguous utterances and the use of utterances as instructions versus confirmations of instructions. These effects hold across two dialects of English, spoken in the American Midwest, and New Zealand. Results from PP-attachment and verb transitivity ambiguities indicate clearly that the production of prosody-syntax correspondences is not conditional upon situational disambiguation of syntactic structure, but is rather more directly tied to grammatical constraints on the production of prosodic and syntactic form. Differences between our results and those reported elsewhere are best explained in terms of differences in task demands.

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