When the voice doesn't speak to the mind: an articulographic investigation of feedback deficits in Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

Prijs: Fellowship awarded competitively

Description

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a pediatric developmental language disorder that causes
children to have difficulties with vowel and consonant production. Feedforward and feedback
problems have been advanced as a causal factor for the speech production deficits. According to
the Directions in Velocity of Articulators (DIVA) model, two feedback mechanisms exist in speech
production: auditory and somatosensory (i.e. sensory information on the position of the
articulators) feedback. Research has shown that CAS patients heavily rely on auditory feedback,
but somatosensory feedback has been experimentally disregarded. We propose to alternately
disrupt both feedback systems described in the DIVA model, and evaluate the deviations the
disruptions induce during syllable productions controlled for length, individual complexity and
sequence complexity compared to a baseline condition (no disruption) and productions of
matched healthy controls. The experimental set-up follows a case-control design. Data will be
analyzed via mixed effects models and generalized additive modeling in R. The main objective is to
establish in-group and between-group comparisons of the effects of a feedback disruption of the
recognized feedback systems in the DIVA model. This will be done by comparing the
measurements of the spatial deviations of the articulators as well as changes in vowel durations
via electromagnetic articulography (EMA) in CAS patients and the controls when they produce the
stimuli.
Mate van erkenningNational
Toekennende organisatieFonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek

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