Individual differences in speech adaptation to an artificial palate

This preliminary investigation examined the ability of individual speakers to adapt to a structural perturbation to the oral environment in the production of [s]. In particular, the experiment explored whether previous evidence of relatively quick adaptation subsequent to intensive practice would be replicated, whether vowel environment would influence the degree of adaptation, whether adaptive strategies would carry over to normal productions and/or similar sounds (i.e., cause negative aftereffects), and whether adaptive strategies developed during the practice phase could be recalled 1 h later. Results of acoustic and perceptual analyses generally revealed improvement after practice, few consistent effects of vowel context, few negative aftereffects, and an absence of quick recall of adaptive strategies. Moreover, extensive individual differences were found in both the degree of initial perturbation and the extent of adaptation. Implications of the results for issues in speech adaptation are briefly discussed