Sensorimotor Interactions in Speech Learning

Auditory input is essential for normal speech development and plays a key role in speech production throughout the life span. In traditional models, auditory input plays two critical roles: 1) establishing the acoustic correlates of speech sounds that serve, in part, as the targets of speech production, and 2) as a source of feedback about a talker's own speech outcomes. This talk will focus on both of these roles, describing a series of studies that examine the capacity of children and adults to adapt to real-time manipulations of auditory feedback during speech production. In one study, we examined sensory and motor adaptation to a manipulation of auditory feedback during production of the fricative “s”. In contrast to prior accounts, adaptive changes were observed not only in speech motor output but also in subjects' perception of the sound. In a second study, speech adaptation was examined following a period of auditory–perceptual training targeting the perception of vowels. The perceptual training was found to systematically improve subjects' motor adaptation response to altered auditory feedback during speech production. The results of both studies support the idea that perceptual and motor processes are tightly coupled in speech production learning, and that the degree and nature of this coupling may change with development