Speech motor development: Integrating muscles, movements, and linguistic units.

Full Abstract

A fundamental problem for those interested in human communication is to determine how ideas and the various units of language structure are communicated through speaking. The physiological concepts involved in the control of muscle contraction and movement are theoretically distant from the processing levels and units postulated to exist in language production models. A review of the literature on adult speakers suggests that they engage complex, parallel processes involving many units, including sentence, phrase, syllable, and phoneme levels. Infants must develop multilayered interactions among language and motor systems. This discussion describes recent studies of speech motor performance relative to varying linguistic goals during the childhood, teenage, and young adult years. Studies of the developing interactions between speech motor and language systems reveal both qualitative and quantitative differences between the developing and the mature systems. These studies provide an experimental basis for a more comprehensive theoretical account of how mappings between units of language and units of action are formed and how they function.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
Readers will be able to:
(1) understand the theoretical differences between models of speech motor control and models of language processing, as well as the nature of the concepts used in the two different kinds of models, (2) explain the concept of coarticulation and state why this phenomenon has confounded attempts to determine the role of linguistic units, such as syllables and phonemes, in speech production, (3) describe the development of speech motor performance skills and specify quantitative and qualitative differences between speech motor performance in children and adults, and (4) describe experimental methods that allow scientists to study speech and limb motor control, as well as compare units of action used to study non-speech and speech movements.

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Author information

Author/s: Smith, Anne (A);

Affiliation: Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA. asmith(-atsign-)purdue.edu

Grants: DC00559 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS) ; DC02527 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS) ; DC04826 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Review

Journal: Journal of communication disorders (J Commun Disord), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: -2006 Sep-Oct; vol 39 (issue 5) : pp 331-49

Dates: Created 2006/10/20; Completed 2007/03/01; Revised 2007/12/03;

PMID: 16934286, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Adult
Child
Child, Preschool
Communication
Electromyography
Female
Humans
Infant
Jaw - physiology

Linguistics
Lip - physiology
Male
Masticatory Muscles - physiology
Motor Skills - physiology
Movement - physiology
Muscle, Skeletal - physiology
Sound Spectrography
Speech - physiology
Speech Production Measurement

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