Speech Motor Research Articles

Using word-picture verification to inform language impairment locus in chronic post-stroke aphasia.

Word-picture verification, a task that requires a yes/no response to whether a word and a picture match, has been used for both receptive and expressive language; however, there is limited systematic investigation on the linguistic subprocesses targeted by the task. Verification may help to identify linguistic strengths and weaknesses to ultimately provide more targeted, individualized lexical retrieval intervention. The current study assessed the association of semantic and phonological skills with verification performance to demonstrate early efficacy of the paradigm as an aphasia assessment. Sixteen adults with chronic post-stroke aphasia completed a battery of language assessments in addition to reading and auditory verification tasks. Verification scores were positively correlated with auditory and reading comprehension. Accuracy of semantic and phonological verification were positively correlated with accuracy on respective receptive language tasks. More semantic errors were made during verification than naming. The relationship of phonological errors between naming and verification varied by modality (reading or listening). Semantic and phonological performance significantly predicted verification response accuracy and latency. In sum, we propose that verification tasks are particularly useful because they inform semantics pre-lemma selection and phonological decoding, helping to localize individual linguistic strengths and weaknesses, especially in the presence of significant motor speech impairment that can obscure expressive language abilities.

Differentiation of Motor Speech Disorders through the Seven Deviance Scores from MonPaGe-2.0.s

For the clinical assessment of motor speech disorders (MSDs) in French, the MonPaGe-2.0.s protocol has been shown to be sensitive enough to diagnose mild MSD based on a combination of acoustic and perceptive scores. Here, we go a step further by investigating whether these scores-which capture deviance on intelligibility, articulation, voice, speech rate, maximum phonation time, prosody, diadochokinetic rate-contribute to the differential diagnosis of MSDs. To this aim, we trained decision trees for two-class automatic classification of different pairs of MSD subtypes based on seven deviance scores that are computed in MonPaGe-2.0.s against matched normative data. We included 60 speakers with mild to moderate MSD from six neuropathologies (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Wilson, Parkinson and Kennedy disease, spinocerebellar ataxia, post-stroke apraxia of speech). The two-class classifications relied mainly on deviance scores from four speech dimensions and predicted with over 85% accuracy the patient's correct clinical category for ataxic, hypokinetic and flaccid dysarthria; classification of the other groups (apraxia of speech and mixed dysarthria) was slightly lower (79% to 82%). Although not perfect and only tested on small cohorts so far, the classification with deviance scores based on clinically informed features seems promising for MSD assessment and classification.

Acoustic and Kinematic Assessment of Motor Speech Impairment in Patients With Suspected Four-Repeat Tauopathies.

The aim of this study was to use acoustic and kinematic speech measures to characterize type of motor speech impairment-apraxia of speech (AOS) versus dysarthria-in individuals with four-repeat tauopathy (4RT)-associated syndromes, including nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), primary progressive AOS (PPAOS), corticobasal syndrome (CBS), and progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome (PSPs). Twenty patient participants were recruited and stratified into two groups: (a) a motor-speech-impaired group of individuals with nfvPPA, PPAOS, CBS, or PSPs and suspected 4RT pathology ("MSI+") and (b) a non-motor-speech-impaired group of individuals with logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia ("MSI-"). Ten healthy, age-matched controls also participated in the study. Participants completed a battery of speech tasks, and 15 acoustic and kinematic speech measures were derived. Quantitative speech measures were grouped into feature categories ("AOS features," "dysarthria features," "shared features"). In addition to quantitative speech measures, two certified speech-language pathologists made independent, blinded auditory-perceptual ratings of motor speech impairment. A principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted to investigate the relative contributions of quantitative features. Quantitative speech measures were generally concordant with independent clinician ratings of motor speech impairment severity. Hypothesis-driven groupings of quantitative measures differentiated predominantly apraxic from predominantly dysarthric presentations within the MSI+ group. PCA results provided additional evidence for differential profiles of motor speech impairment in the MSI+ group; heterogeneity across individuals is explained in large part by varying levels of overall severity-captured by the shared feature variable group-and degree of apraxia severity, as measured by the AOS feature variable group. Quantitative features reveal heterogeneity of MSI in the 4RT group in terms of both overall severity and subtype of MSI. Results suggest the potential for acoustic and kinematic speech assessment methods to inform characterization of motor speech impairment in 4RT-associated syndromes. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21401778.

The contribution of white matter pathology, hypoperfusion, lesion load, and stroke recurrence to language deficits following acute subcortical left hemisphere stroke.

Aphasia, the loss of language ability following damage to the brain, is among the most disabling and common consequences of stroke. Subcortical stroke, occurring in the basal ganglia, thalamus, and/or deep white matter can result in aphasia, often characterized by word fluency, motor speech output, or sentence generation impairments. The link between greater lesion volume and acute aphasia is well documented, but the independent contributions of lesion location, cortical hypoperfusion, prior stroke, and white matter degeneration (leukoaraiosis) remain unclear, particularly in subcortical aphasia. Thus, we aimed to disentangle the contributions of each factor on language impairments in left hemisphere acute subcortical stroke survivors. Eighty patients with acute ischemic left hemisphere subcortical stroke (less than 10 days post-onset) participated. We manually traced acute lesions on diffusion-weighted scans and prior lesions on T2-weighted scans. Leukoaraiosis was rated on T2-weighted scans using the Fazekas et al. (1987) scale. Fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) scans were evaluated for hyperintense vessels in each vascular territory, providing an indirect measure of hypoperfusion in lieu of perfusion-weighted imaging. We found that language performance was negatively correlated with acute/total lesion volumes and greater damage to substructures of the deep white matter and basal ganglia. We conducted a LASSO regression that included all variables for which we found significant univariate relationships to language performance, plus nuisance regressors. Only total lesion volume was a significant predictor of global language impairment severity. Further examination of three participants with severe language impairments suggests that their deficits result from impairment in domain-general, rather than linguistic, processes. Given the variability in language deficits and imaging markers associated with such deficits, it seems likely that subcortical aphasia is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome with distinct causes across individuals.

A case with cardiac, skeletal, speech, and motor traits narrows the subtelomeric 19p13.3 microdeletion region to 46 kb.

Subtelomeric 19p13.3 deletions have been associated with diverse anatomical and developmental phenotypes. A recent study of eight patients with subtelomeric interstitial 19p13.3 microdeletions at 0.3-1.4Mb (hg 19) showed associations with growth restrictions, skeletal deformities, craniofacial anomalies, congenital heart defects, renal malformations, hernias, immune system deficits, fine and gross motor delays, speech delays, and developmental and learning delays. The authors defined two small regions of overlap containing four and 11 genes, respectively, with potential haploinsufficiency. Here, we present a new case with a de novo 184 kb deletion containing eight genes, three of which fall into the second previously identified small region of overlap, reducing the shared region to 46 kb. Phenotypic traits include most of the core findings in the previously reported cases but not growth restrictions, craniofacial anomalies, renal malformation, and learning disability. A closer look at the speech and motor delays reveals apraxic speech and discoordination in the fine and gross motor domain, consistent with cerebellar involvement across motor systems. Findings are consistent with a role of AZU1 in the observed immune deficiencies and PTBP1 in the observed skeletal, abdominal, speech, language, motor, and sensory traits. This case thus contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the subtelomeric 19p13.3 deletion region.

Design and Simulation of a Low Power 384-channel Actively Multiplexed Neural Interface.

Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) provide clinical benefits including partial restoration of lost motor control, vision, speech, and hearing. A fundamental limitation of existing BCIs is their inability to span several areas (> cm2) of the cortex with fine (<100 μm) resolution. One challenge of scaling neural interfaces is output wiring and connector sizes as each channel must be independently routed out of the brain. Time division multiplexing (TDM) overcomes this by enabling several channels to share the same output wire at the cost of added noise. This work leverages a 130-nm CMOS process and transfer printing to design and simulate a 384-channel actively multiplexed array, which minimizes noise by adding front end filtering and amplification to every electrode site (pixel). The pixels are 50 μm × 50 μm and enable recording of all 384 channels at 30 kHz with a gain of 22.3 dB, noise of 9.57 μV rms, bandwidth of 0.1 Hz - 10 kHz, while only consuming 0.63 μW/channel. This work can be applied broadly across neural interfaces to create high channel-count arrays and ultimately improve BCIs.

Communication and Social Interaction Experiences of Youths With Congenital Motor Speech Disorders.

The purpose of this study was to explore the communication and social interaction experiences of adolescents with congenital motor speech disorders due to cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, with the aim of identifying clinical and research needs to support the development and implementation of speech-language interventions. Five male youths (ages 14-18 years) with congenital motor speech disorders and one of their parents participated in face-to-face, semistructured interviews designed to understand communication and social experiences in daily life. Interviews were audio-recorded and orthographically transcribed offline. Content was coded according to topic areas emerging in the data. Themes were developed to illustrate the most salient and representative aspects of participants' experiences according to the phenomenological tradition that recognizes that participants are experts in their "lived experience." Participants described the youths' day-to-day communication experiences, including facilitators and barriers to successful social interactions. Thematic analysis revealed three main themes: (a) strong core relationships amidst sparse, superficial interactions in daily life; (b) the complicated picture of why; and (c) how speech-language pathologists can help. Participants reported that the impact of congenital motor speech disorders on social interactions and experiences became more apparent in adolescence than in earlier childhood. Addressing communication challenges to meet the unique social demands of this period requires tailored interventions that target multiple contributing factors beyond speech impairment, such as social communication skills, negative communication partner attitudes, and participation opportunities. Shifting practice toward a life participation approach to communication intervention stands to substantially improve the long-term social outcomes of adolescents with motor speech disorders.

Attentional Demand of Motor Speech Encoding: Evidence From Parkinson's Disease.

While the involvement of attention in utterance planning is well established at the conceptual and lexical levels, the attentional demands of postlexical processes are still debated. This study investigates the involvement of attentional resources on motor speech encoding during utterance production in the context of Parkinson's disease (PD), a population allowing to assess if the attentional demands observed in a dual-task paradigm (the dual-task costs [DTCs]) are explained by postlexical difficulties and not solely by executive impairment. Speech production was analyzed in a dual-task paradigm with 30 participants presenting with motor speech disorders due to hypokinetic dysarthria in the context of PD. The dual-task comprised an automatic speech task in which participants recited the days of the week and two nonverbal tasks evaluating processing speed and inhibition. The severity of dysarthria and performance in several executive tests (inhibition, verbal fluency, and cognitive shifting) were used as potential predictors of the DTCs. Individuals with PD exhibited a DTC on the nonverbal tasks and on the speech task when the secondary task was inhibition (the most difficult one). Additionally, the severity of dysarthria and a poorer performance in cognitive shifting predicted a more severe DTC on speech rate. Finally, modulation of the magnitude of the DTCs was observed, depending on the difficulty of the nonverbal secondary task. The results suggest that, in PD, postlexical processes require attentional resources and cognitive shifting is related to dual-task performance in speech. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21265893.

Testing the relationship between lateralization on sequence-based motor tasks and language laterality using an online battery

ABSTRACT Studies have highlighted an association between motor laterality and speech production laterality. It is thought that common demands for sequential processing may underlie this association. However, most studies in this area have relied on relatively small samples and have infrequently explored the reliability of the tools used to assess lateralization. We, therefore, established the validity and reliability of an online battery measuring sequence-based motor laterality and language laterality before exploring the associations between laterality indices on language and motor tasks. The online battery was completed by 621 participants, 52 of whom returned to complete the battery a second time. The three motor tasks included in the battery showed good between-session reliability (r ≥ .78) and were lateralized in concordance with hand preference. The novel measure of speech production laterality was left lateralized at population level as predicted, but reliability was less satisfactory (r = .62). We found no evidence of an association between sequence-based motor laterality and language laterality. Those with a left-hand preference were more strongly lateralized on motor tasks requiring midline crossing; this effect was not observed in right-handers. We conclude that there is little evidence of the co-lateralization of language and sequence-based motor skill on this battery.

Acoustic analysis of spatiotemporal variability in children with childhood apraxia of speech

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a pediatric neurological motor speech disorder characterized by impaired speech execution in the absence of neuromuscular deficits. Children with CAS show distinct speech features, including sequencing, coarticulation, and prosodic deficits, compared to children with other speech disorders. The core deficit in CAS is at the level of planning and programming the precise spatiotemporal parameters of movement sequences necessary to produce natural-sounding speech. This study will investigate spatiotemporal variability in children with CAS compared to children with typical development (TD) using the acoustic spatiotemporal index (aSTI). The aSTI measures spatiotemporal variability in the amplitude envelope of speech sounds across multiple repetitions of an utterance; higher aSTI values reflect higher movement variability. In the current project, children with CAS and TD were recruited nationally to participate in an online study investigating language and motor skills. Children produced 10 repetitions of “Buy Bobby a puppy” and “Mom pets the puppy”; we analyzed these two sentences using the aSTI. Data from 20 children (CAS = 10; TD = 10), ranging in age from 7- to 12-years-old, will be presented. We predict that children with CAS will show higher aSTI values compared to children with TD.

Left Frontal White Matter Links to Rhythm Processing Relevant to Speech Production in Apraxia of Speech.

Recent mechanistic models argue for a key role of rhythm processing in both speech production and speech perception. Patients with the non-fluent variant (NFV) of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) with apraxia of speech (AOS) represent a specific study population in which this link can be examined. Previously, we observed impaired rhythm processing in NFV with AOS. We hypothesized that a shared neurocomputational mechanism structures auditory input (sound and speech) and output (speech production) in time, a "temporal scaffolding" mechanism. Since considerable white matter damage is observed in NFV, we test here whether white matter changes are related to impaired rhythm processing. Forty-seven participants performed a psychoacoustic test battery: 12 patients with NFV and AOS, 11 patients with the semantic variant of PPA, and 24 cognitively intact age- and education-matched controls. Deformation-based morphometry was used to test whether white matter volume correlated to rhythmic abilities. In 34 participants, we also obtained tract-based metrics of the left Aslant tract, which is typically damaged in patients with NFV. Nine out of 12 patients with NFV displayed impaired rhythmic processing. Left frontal white matter atrophy adjacent to the supplementary motor area (SMA) correlated with poorer rhythmic abilities. The structural integrity of the left Aslant tract also correlated with rhythmic abilities. A colocalized and perhaps shared white matter substrate adjacent to the SMA is associated with impaired rhythmic processing and motor speech impairment. Our results support the existence of a temporal scaffolding mechanism structuring perceptual input and speech output.

Comparative landmark detection on stops of dysarthric speech

Dysarthria is a disease of motor speech that affects millions of individuals. This impairment induces wrongly pronounced phonemes, variable speech amplitude, low articulation, etc resulting in poor intelligibility. Significant time instants known as landmarks are detected for modifications in the distorted dysarthric speech. The difficulty in accurately locating the regions for modification in an automated fashion is one of the most predominant challenges. Hence it is important to detect the landmarks accurately and modifications have to be carried out for the segment of interest based on estimates. This work aims at identifying the stop consonants in dysarthric speech accurately, in particular, closure onset and burst onset landmarks for stops and, also comparing landmark detection by automatic and manual procedures to improve the intelligibility of dysarthric speech. Automatic landmark detection by using energy derivatives gives more accurate landmark detection than Manual landmark detection. Praat software and Speechmark toolbox are used to detect landmarks.

Functional connectivity to the premotor cortex maps onto longitudinal brain neurodegeneration in progressive apraxia of speech

Primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) is a neurodegenerative motor speech disorder affecting the ability to produce speech. If agrammatic aphasia is present, it can be referred to as the non-fluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA). We investigated whether resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) connectivity from disease “epicenters” correlated with longitudinal gray matter atrophy and hypometabolism in nfvPPA and PPAOS. Eighteen nfvPPA and 23 PPAOS patients underwent clinical assessment, structural MRI, rs-fMRI, and [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET at baseline and ∼2 years follow-up. Rates of neurodegeneration in nfvPPA and PPAOS correlated with functional connectivity to the premotor, motor, and frontal cortex. Connectivity to the caudate and thalamus was more strongly associated with rates of hypometabolism than atrophy. Connectivity to the left Broca's area was more strongly associated with rates of atrophy and hypometabolism in nfvPPA. Finally, functional connectivity to a network of regions, and not to a single epicenter, correlated with rates of neurodegeneration in PPAOS and nfvPPA, suggesting similar biological mechanisms driving disease progression, with regional differences related to language.

Motor speech effects in subthalamic deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.

A motor speech disorder or dysarthria commonly arises in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The impact of subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) on motor speech and the potential of intraoperative motor speech testing to predict outcomes are unknown. This study examined 1) the types and prevalence of motor speech changes observed with STN DBS and their relation to the preoperative condition, 2) the ability of intraoperative testing to predict postoperative changes in motor speech, and 3) the spatial relationship between stimulation sites producing maximal motor improvement, as measured by the Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS), and maximal motor speech deterioration. Comprehensive preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative motor speech/dysarthria evaluations were performed in consecutive patients with advanced idiopathic PD who underwent STN DBS surgery in the period from 2011 to 2016. Preoperative type of dysarthria and overall dysarthria severity rating along with intraoperative motor speech testing results were evaluated as predictors of postoperative change. Atlas-independent, fully individualized field modeling was used to identify stimulation sites associated with maximal MDS-UPDRS motor improvement and motor speech deterioration. Forty-three patients with PD treated with STN DBS were prospectively studied. Improved MDS-UPDRS motor scores and worsened dysarthria were demonstrated by a subset of patients (16/43). Preoperative dysarthria characteristics did not predict postoperative deterioration. Intraoperative assessment of motor speech strongly predicted postoperative outcomes (OR 4.4, p = 0.02). Sites of maximal MDS-UPDRS motor improvement and worsened dysarthria were distinct. Worsened dysarthria was associated with capsular stimulation, anterior and ventral to the site of maximal MDS-UPDRS motor improvement. The predictive reliability of intraoperative motor speech testing, together with the identification of distinct stimulation sites for motor speech impairment and improved MDS-UPDRS motor function, raise the possibility that DBS lead repositioning or reprogramming could reduce adverse effects on motor speech without impacting MDS-UPDRS motor outcomes in patients undergoing STN DBS.

TH-198. Neuronavigated theta burst stimulation for achieve safer tumor resection near motor speech area – case study

TH-198. Neuronavigated theta burst stimulation for achieve safer tumor resection near motor speech area – case study

Signal analysis and classification of a novel active brain-computer interface based on four-category sequential coding

In order to increase the number of instruction sets for the active brain-computer interface (BCI), a novel experimental paradigm based on the sequential coding of motor imagery and speech imagery is proposed in this paper. By dividing one motor imagery and one speech imagery into time series, four imagination tasks are obtained: 1) motor imagery; 2) speech imagery; 3) motor imagery first and then speech imagery; 4) speech imagery first and then motor imagery. After analyzing the temporal, frequency and spatial features of electroencephalography (EEG) signals, four types of signals are classified by a multi-classification model based on time sequence. In this model, feature extraction and classification are accomplished by common spatial pattern (CSP) and support vector machine (SVM), respectively. 12 subjects participate in this experimental paradigm, and their average classification accuracy is 68.94%. The classification results are much higher than random probability, so the proposed experimental paradigm is feasible and valuable. The experimental paradigm based on sequential coding can effectively increase the number of instruction sets of active BCIs, so the practicability of BCIs is also improved.

Cross-Modal Somatosensory Repetition Priming and Speech Processing

Motor speech treatment approaches have been applied in both adults with aphasia and apraxia of speech and children with speech-sound disorders. Identifying links between motor speech intervention techniques and the modes of action (MoA) targeted would improve our understanding of how and why motor speech interventions achieve their effects, along with identifying its effective components. The current study focuses on identifying potential MoAs for a specific motor speech intervention technique. We aim to demonstrate that somatosensory inputs can influence lexical processing, thus providing further evidence that linguistic information stored in the brain and accessed as part of speech perception processes encodes information related to speech production. In a cross-modal repetition priming paradigm, we examined whether the processing of external somatosensory priming cues was modulated by both word-level (lexical frequency, low- or high-frequency) and speech sound articulatory features. The study participants were divided into two groups. The first group consisted of twenty-three native English speakers who received somatosensory priming stimulation to their oro-facial structures (either to labial corners or under the jaw). The second group consisted of ten native English speakers who participated in a control study where somatosensory priming stimulation was applied to their right or left forehead as a control condition. The results showed significant somatosensory priming effects for the low-frequency words, where the congruent somatosensory condition yielded significantly shorter reaction times and numerically higher phoneme accuracy scores when compared to the incongruent somatosensory condition. Data from the control study did not reveal any systematic priming effects from forehead stimulation (non-speech related site), other than a general (and expected) tendency for longer reaction times with low-frequency words. These findings provide further support for the notion that speech production information is represented in the mental lexicon and can be accessed through exogenous Speech-Language Pathologist driven somatosensory inputs related to place of articulation.

The impact of epilepsy on the overall development of children with autism spectrum disorders

15—30 % of children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are diagnosed with epilepsy during their lifetime, and 20—39 % of children with ASD have neurophysiological phenom- ena specific to epilepsy on the EEG. The presence of epilepsy and specific epileptic activity on the EEG may impair the prognosis of cognitive deve- lopment, motor functions and social functioning in children with ASD. Objective: to investigate the fea- tures of the clinical course of ASD in preschool children with epileptic seizures and specific epileptic activity on the EEG. During 2016—2021 170 children with ASD were selected and included in the study, a control group of 65 people and a main group of 105 people were formed. Patients in the main group are divided into two subgroups: IA children with autism and epilepsy — 35 people; IВ children with autism and specific epi- leptic changes on the human EEG — 70. ASD and epilepsy have a mutually burdensome course. Seizures occurring at an early age are more resis- tant to the use of antiepileptic therapy, these children have lower indicators of social functioning and psychophysi- cal development. Children with ASD and comorbid epileptic seizures tend to accumulate delays in the development of perceptual clusters, gross motor skills, visual-motor coordination, speech development, and cognitive skills. There are 4 variants of the clinical course of ASD: a variant with general developmental delay (accumulation of a lag from the expected developmental trajectory when asses- sing PER-R), a variant with a plateau of developmental delay, a variant with early onset of symptoms when assessing ADI-R and ADOS between the ages of 12 and 24 months; variant with late manifestation of autistic symptoms. In the IB subgroup cases of mental retardation predominate, compared to the control group and the IA sub- group, which indicates the accumulation of additional cases of seizure-free forms of epileptic encephalopathies, encephalopathies develop ment, encephalopathies with epileptic disintegration.

Recent trends in telerehabilitation of stroke patients: A narrative review.

Stroke is the main reason for disabilities worldwide leading to motor dysfunction, spatial neglect and cognitive problems, aphasia, and other speech-language pathologies, reducing the life quality. To overcome disabilities, telerehabilitation (TR) has been recently introduced. The aim of this review was to analyze current TR approaches for stroke patients' recovery. We searched 6 online databases from January 2018 to October 2021, and included 70 research and review papers in the review. We analyzed TR of 995 individuals, which was delivered synchronously and asynchronously. Findings show TR is feasible improving motor function, cognition, speech, and language communication among stroke patients. However, the dose of TR sessions varied significantly. We identified the following limitations: lack of equipment, software, and space for home-based exercises, insufficient internet capacity and speed, unavailability to provide hands on guidance, low digital proficiency and education, high cognitive demand, small samples, data heterogeneity, and no economic evaluation. The review shows TR is superior or similar to conventional rehabilitation in clinical outcomes and is used as complementary therapy or as alternative treatments. More importantly, TR provides access to rehabilitation services of a large number of patients with immobility, living in remote areas, and during COVID-19 pandemic or similar events.

Swallowing and Motor Speech Skills in Unilateral Cerebral Palsy: Novel Findings From a Preliminary Cross-Sectional Study.

Our purpose was to start examining clinical swallowing and motor speech skills of school-age children with unilateral cerebral palsy (UCP) compared to typically developing children (TDC), how these skills relate to each other, and whether they are predicted by clinical/demographic data (age, birth history, lesion type, etc.). Seventeen children with UCP and 17 TDC (7-12 years old) participated in this cross-sectional study. Feeding/swallowing skills were evaluated using the Dysphagia Disorder Survey (DDS) and a normalized measure of mealtime efficiency (normalized mealtime duration, i.e., nMD). Motor speech was assessed via speech intelligibility and speech rate measures using the Test of Children's Speech Plus. Analyses included nonparametric bootstrapping, correlation analysis, and multiple regression. Children with UCP exhibited more severe (higher) DDS scores (p = .0096, Part 1; p = .0132, Part 2) and reduced speech rate than TDC (p = .0120). Furthermore, in children with UCP, total DDS scores were moderately negatively correlated with speech intelligibility (words: r = -.6162, p = .0086; sentences: r = -.60792, p = .0096). Expressive language scores were the only significant predictor of feeding and swallowing performance, and receptive language scores were the only significant predictor of motor speech skills. Swallowing and motor speech skills can be affected in school-age children with UCP, with wide variability of performance also noted. Preliminary cross-system interactions between swallowing, speech, and language are observed and might support the complex relationships between these domains. Further understanding these relationships in this population could have prognostic and/or therapeutic value and warrants further study.