Compensation for a labial perturbation: An acoustic and articulatory study of child and adult French speakers

This paper deals with production-perception relationships in articulatory compensation. The high French vowel [u] was used to study compensation strategies for a lip-tube perturbation in 6-year-old children and adults. Tubes were placed between the speakers’ lips to perturb vocal tract geometry. Ultrasound images and speech signals were recorded for this isolated vowel in three conditions: (1) before liptube insertion, (2) with the tube in place, and (3) after removal of the lip-tube. Speakers pronounced ten repetitions of the isolated vowel in each condition. To account for the quality of the compensation, perceptual experiments were carried out and revealed that 6 speakers (4 adults and 2 children) were able to completely compensate for the perturbation. The selectivity of compensatory articulation may be related to biomechanical constraints relative to each speaker, which could prevent them from achieving complete compensation. The results of this study further extend our understanding of the use of feedback in the development of speech production processes and help to specify the representation of the speech task.