Auditory plasticity and sensorimotor learning in speech production

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown the speech motor system to be highly flexible and responsive to changes in sensory input, revealing a central role for both auditory and somatosensory feedback in the acquisition and maintenance of speech motor control. Consistent with these studies, models of speech production have highlighted the role of accurate, stable sensory representations that serve, in part, as the goals of speech movements. A separate (and considerable) body of work has demonstrated that auditory-sensory representations of speech sounds are not perfectly stable, but rather exhibit rapid adaptation to changing input conditions in both children and adults. The plasticity of auditory representations has important implications for the control of speech production, both in early speech motor development and in the sensory-based maintenance of speech accuracy that characterizes adult speech motor control. In this talk, I will describe a series of studies that explore the link between sensory and motor plasticity in the speech motor system. The studies combine the paradigm of sensorimotor adaptation (altering auditory feedback during speech production) with measures and manipulations of auditory-perceptual representations of speech sounds. The results reveal not only that auditory speech targets are flexible under conditions of altered auditory feedback, but that changes in sensory representations can have a direct impact on speech motor learning and performance.