The structural and functional organization of any biophysical system provides potentially important information on the underlying control structure. For speech, the anatomical and physiological components of the vocal tract and the apparent functional nature of speech motor actions suggest a characteristic control structure in which the. entire vocal tract can be viewed as the smallest function...

Converging evidence suggests that stuttering is associated with deficits in the planning and execution of speech. Evidence also suggests that the onset, development, and loci of stuttering are related to demands language places on speech motor planning and execution. We combined linguistic and vocal motor assessments to address two questions: 1) Can we identify a subgroup of adult stutterers wh...

In order to study how dynamical properties of the motor plant are accounted for in movement planning, an optimal motor planning hypothesis was proposed in the late eighties. It suggested that forward and inverse internal models of the dynamics of the motor plant are learned in the brain, and that these models are used to compute and minimize a cost along the movement sequence. In this paper, th...

This chapter presents a physical-computational model of sensory-motor grounded language interpretation for simple speech acts. The model is based on an implemented conversational robot. It combines a cybernetic closed-loop control architecture with structured conceptual schemas. The interpretation of directive and descriptive speech acts consists of translating utterances into updates of memory...

Severe and persistent speech disorder, dysarthria, may be present for life after brain injury in childhood, yet the neural correlates of this chronic disorder remain elusive. Although abundant literature is available on language reorganization after lesions in childhood, little is known about the capacity of motor speech networks to reorganize after injury. Here, we examine the structural and f...

Objectives: The present research aimed to identify the assessment and treatment processes implemented by Iranian speech-language pathologists (SLPs) for CAS and to investigate the possibility of impact of their knowledge level and years of experience on their choice of assessment and treatment. Methods: A cross-sectional method using survey design was employed to obtain a sample of 260 SLPs w...

Numerous studies have documented distinctive patterns of phonetic variation associated with actual and perceived sexual orientation. This investigation tested the hypothesis that these are the consequence of variation in speech-motor fluency. Gay, lesbian/bisexual (GLB), and heterosexual men and women participated in a diadochokinetic rate task. No consistent differences between GLB and heteros...

A critical examination of speech motor control depends on an in-depth understanding of network connectivity associated with Brodmann areas 44 and 45 and surrounding cortices. Damage to these areas has been associated with two conditions-the speech motor programming disorder apraxia of speech (AOS) and the linguistic/grammatical disorder of Broca's aphasia. Here we focus on AOS, which is most co...

The conventional approach to speech production assumes that a linguistic control signal feeds down into an execution module where vocal articulators are coordinated. The linguistic signal takes the form of a stream of phonological units or discrete symbolic commands. This characterization reflects how a variety of control architectures in cognitive robotics are also based on symbolic commands. ...

PURPOSE There has been renewed interest on the part of speech-language pathologists to understand how the motor system learns and determine whether principles of motor learning, derived from studies of nonspeech motor skills, apply to treatment of motor speech disorders. The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce principles that enhance motor learning for nonspeech motor skills and to examine...