Articulatory timing in sentence production in young normal speakers and speakers with apraxia of speech: A speed history analysis.

Abstract

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is typically considered as characterized by kinematic timing problems among articulators; however, kinematic descriptions of such phenomenon are scarce. The study describes kinematic timing based on a speed history of the lower lip and the jaw, across speaking rates in young normal speakers and speakers with AOS. Kinematic data were acquired through the x‐ray microbeam system, and data of young normal speakers were taken from the x‐ray microbeam speech production database. A short sentence was the speech material/target. Acoustic correlates of major speed peaks of the jaw and the lower lip, as well as their temporal relationships with each other, were investigated. Of particular interest was how changes in speech rate affect such temporal relationships in normal speakers and speakers with AOS. The goal of this study was to establish a description method of inter‐ and intra‐articulator timing for use in analyses of point‐parametrized articulatory data in sentence‐level materials.