This paper investigates speech motor control maturity in 4year-old Canadian French children. Acoustic and ultrasound data recorded from four children, and for comparison, from four adults, are presented and analyzed. Maturity of speech motor control is assessed by measuring two characteristics: token-to-token variability of isolated vowels, as a measure of motor control accuracy, and extra-syll...

The perception of action is associated with increased activity in motor regions, implicating such regions in the recognition, understanding and imitation of actions. We examined the possibility that perception of speech, both auditory and visual, would also result in changes in the excitability of the motor system underlying speech production. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to th...

Adults produce rapid, interleaved sequences of speech sounds by controlling the relative motions in time and space of the oral articulators. The control and coordination of these effectors appear to be automatic, effortless, and usually error free. If speech production is viewed within the framework of classical motor control theories, we can infer that adults have organized functional synergie...

The target paper of this commentary—“The Equilibrium Point Hypothesis and Its Application to Speech Motor Control”—by Perrier, Ostry, and Laboissière (hereafter POL) presents a sophisticated application of the λ-version of the Equilibrium Point Hypothesis to issues of linguistic concern in the control and coordination of speech articulators. This is done in terms of an elegant model of jaw biom...

PURPOSE To describe (a) the assessment of residual speech sound disorders (SSDs) in bilinguals by distinguishing speech patterns associated with second language acquisition from patterns associated with misarticulations and (b) how assessment of domains such as speech motor control and phonological awareness can provide a more complete understanding of SSDs in bilinguals. METHOD A review of J...

objective: there are controversial reports about factors that affect recovery from stuttering. in the ‎present study, the effect of hand dominancy, fine motor and inhibition control on late ‎recovery from stuttering was investigated among a group of kurdish-persian children who ‎stuttered in iran.‎ method: twenty-two kurdish-persian children aged 7-14 years who stuttered were followed for 6 ‎ye...

BACKGROUND Rhythmic disturbances are a hallmark of motor speech disorders, in which the motor control deficits interfere with the outward flow of speech and by extension speech understanding. As the functions of rhythm are language-specific, breakdowns in rhythm should have language-specific consequences for communication. OBJECTIVE The goals of this paper are to (i) provide a review of the c...

Speech requires precise motor control and rapid sequencing of highly complex vocal musculature. Despite its complexity, most people produce spoken language effortlessly. This is due to activity in distributed neuronal circuitry including cortico-striato-thalamic loops that control speech-motor output. Understanding the neuro-genetic mechanisms involved in the correct development and function of...

The acquisition and mastery of speech-motor control requires years of practice spanning the course of development. People who stutter often perform poorly on speech-motor tasks thereby calling into question their ability to establish the stable neural motor programs required for masterful speech-motor control. There is evidence to support the assertion that these neural motor programs are repre...