Speech Planning Research Articles

To plan or not to plan: Does planning for production remove facilitation from associative priming?

Theories of conversation propose that in order to have smooth transitions from one turn to the next, speakers already plan their response while listening to their interlocutor. Moreover, it has been argued that speakers align their linguistic representations (i.e. prime each other), thereby reducing the processing costs associated with concurrent listening and speaking. In two experiments, we assessed how identity and associative priming from spoken words onto picture naming were affected by a concurrent speech planning task. In a baseline (no name) condition, participants heard prime words that were identical, associatively related, or unrelated to target pictures presented two seconds after prime onset. Each prime was accompanied by a non-target picture and followed by its recorded name. The participant did not name the non-target picture. In the plan condition, the participants first named the non-target picture, instead of listening to the recording, and then the target. In Experiment 1, where the plan- and no-plan conditions were tested between participants, priming effects of equal strength were found in the plan and no-plan condition. In Experiment 2, where the two conditions were tested within participants, the identity priming effect was maintained, but the associative priming effect was only seen in the no-plan but not in the plan condition. In this experiment, participant had to decide at the onset of each trial whether or not to name the non-target picture, rendering the task more complex than in Experiment 1. These decision processes may have interfered with the processing of the primes. Thus, associative priming can take place during speech planning, but only if the cognitive load is not too high.

Tic word duration and speaking rate in Tourette's

Tourette's syndrome is a neurological condition characterized by the presence of an inventory of involuntary movements and vocalizations called tics that is unique to each individual. Tics occur on a background of typical, ongoing voluntary behavior, including speech. The voluntary speech of persons with Tourette's, like the speech of neurotypicals, shows expected signatures of underlying prosodic structure, e.g., emphatic word lengthening, utterance-final word lengthening and changes in speaking rate across an utterance. Many vocal tics resemble words or phrases uttered out of context but studies investigating the acoustic properties of tics in relation to the surrounding speech context do not exist. This state of affairs precludes understanding the relationship between linguistic vocal behavior, speech disfluencies, vocal ticking and other vocal behaviors like coughing. The current case study represents a linguistically informed analysis of vocal tic production during rehearsed, voluntary speech that investigated the impact of proximity to a prosodic boundary on tic word duration and speaking rate in an effort to determine whether vocal tics are produced via the typical speech planning and production pipeline.

The cortical dynamics of speaking: Lexical and phonological knowledge simultaneously recruit the frontal and temporal cortex within 200 ms

Language production models typically assume that retrieving a word for articulation is a sequential process with substantial functional delays between conceptual, lexical, phonological and motor processing, respectively. Nevertheless, explicit evidence contrasting the spatiotemporal dynamics between different word production components is scarce. Here, using anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography during overt meaningful speech production, we explore the speed with which lexico-semantic versus acoustic-articulatory information of a to-be-uttered word become first neurophysiologically manifest in the cerebral cortex. We demonstrate early modulations of brain activity by the lexical frequency of a word in the temporal cortex and the left inferior frontal gyrus, simultaneously with activity in the motor and the posterior superior temporal cortex reflecting articulatory-acoustic phonological features (+LABIAL vs. +CORONAL) of the word-initial speech sounds (e.g., Monkey vs. Donkey). The specific nature of the spatiotemporal pattern correlating with a word's frequency and initial phoneme demonstrates that, in the course of speech planning, lexico-semantic and phonological-articulatory processes emerge together rapidly, drawing in parallel on temporal and frontal cortex. This novel finding calls for revisions of current brain language theories of word production.

Exploration of the Brain in Rest: Resting-State Functional MRI Abnormalities in Patients with Classic Galactosemia

Patients with classic galactosemia, a genetic metabolic disorder, encounter cognitive impairments, including motor (speech), language, and memory deficits. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate spontaneous functional connectivity during rest to investigate potential abnormalities in neural networks. We characterized networks using seed-based correlation analysis in 13 adolescent patients and 13 matched controls. Results point towards alterations in several networks, including well-known resting-state networks (e.g. default mode, salience, visual network). Particularly, patients showed alterations in networks encompassing medial prefrontal cortex, parietal lobule and (pre)cuneus, involved in spatial orientation and attention. Furthermore, altered connectivity of networks including the insula and superior frontal gyrus -important for sensory-motor integration and motor (speech) planning- was demonstrated. Lastly, abnormalities were found in networks involving occipital regions, linked to visuospatial capacities and working memory. Importantly, across several seeds, altered functional connectivity to the superior frontal cortex, anterior insula, parietal lobule and the (pre)cuneus was observed in patients, suggesting special importance of these brain regions. Moreover, these alterations correlated with neurocognitive test results, supporting a relation with the clinical phenotype. Our findings contribute to improved characterization of brain impairments in classic galactosemia and provide directions for further investigations.

P281 The neurophysiological mechanisms linking stuttering and normal speech

Objectives This study examined underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of developmental stuttering – facilitation in the motor cortex during speech preparation served as analogue to the speech planning process. Methods Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation pulses induced Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs), recorded from the tongue. 18 Adults Who Stutter (AWS) and 17 Adults who do Not Stutter (ANS) completed three experiments: spontaneous speech, planned speech and speech with predefined pacing. Each experiment involved 120 trials. In each trial, participants read a German prefix + verb utterance from a screen; the pulse was applied shortly before speech onset. Trial MEPs were normalised to average non-speech MEPs. MEP amplitude, MEP facilitation ratio (amplitude:pre-speech offset) and group difference were analysed by multiple regression, and speech reaction time analysed by correlation. Results MEP base values were 11.1–23.4% lower in AWS than ANS (by standardised Beta), across all three experiments. MEP facilitation ratio slopes were also 4.9–18.3% smaller in AWS than ANS across all three experiments. Reaction times for AWS were only significantly slower than ANS in the spontaneous speech and predefined pacing experiments. No stuttering was detected during the trials. The group difference in spontaneous speech was 100% and 101% greater than the other two experiments respectively. Discussion While both performance of ANS and AWS worsens under disturbed speech conditions, AWS responded better than controls to greater disturbance. Conclusions Research and therapy in stuttering should focus on non-disturbed speech. Significance These findings give insight into both fluent and dysfluent speech planning, especially in the context of fluency therapies.

Functional neural circuits that underlie developmental stuttering

The aim of this study was to identify differences in functional and effective brain connectivity between persons who stutter (PWS) and typically developing (TD) fluent speakers, and to assess whether those differences can serve as biomarkers to distinguish PWS from TD controls. We acquired resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data in 44 PWS and 50 TD controls. We then used Independent Component Analysis (ICA) together with Hierarchical Partner Matching (HPM) to identify networks of robust, functionally connected brain regions that were highly reproducible across participants, and we assessed whether connectivity differed significantly across diagnostic groups. We then used Granger Causality (GC) to study the causal interactions (effective connectivity) between the regions that ICA and HPM identified. Finally, we used a kernel support vector machine to assess how well these measures of functional connectivity and granger causality discriminate PWS from TD controls. Functional connectivity was stronger in PWS compared with TD controls in the supplementary motor area (SMA) and primary motor cortices, but weaker in inferior frontal cortex (IFG, Broca’s area), caudate, putamen, and thalamus. Additionally, causal influences were significantly weaker in PWS from the IFG to SMA, and from the basal ganglia to IFG through the thalamus, compared to TD controls. ICA and GC indices together yielded an accuracy of 92.7% in classifying PWS from TD controls. Our findings suggest the presence of dysfunctional circuits that support speech planning and timing cues for the initiation and execution of motor sequences in PWS. Our high accuracy of classification further suggests that these aberrant brain features may serve as robust biomarkers for PWS.

Repetition, Filled-Pause, Pause, and Correction as an Indication of Speech Planning and Execution Processes Among Japanese EFL Learners

Repetition, Filled-Pause, Pause, and Correction as an Indication of Speech Planning and Execution Processes Among Japanese EFL Learners

Plano terapêutico fonoaudiológico pautado no conceito de gêneros do discurso de Bakhtin: aspectos teórico-metodológicos

A noção de gêneros do discurso ganhou expressividade no Brasil a partir da década de 1990, quando, por meio dos Parâmetros Curriculares de Língua Portuguesa, foi proposta uma ressignificação nas formas de ensino e aprendizagem. Estratégias para o desenvolvimento de competências em leitura e escrita começaram a ser pensadas através da língua em uso, a língua que se dá nos gêneros orais e escritos que medeiam as interações humanas. Embora a teoria de gêneros tenha sido adaptada para a esfera da educação, pode, desde que respeitadas as especificidades do contexto, ser estendida ao campo terapêutico. Se no contexto da escola se usa a expressão “proposta didática”, na esfera da clínica elabora-se um “plano terapêutico fonoaudiológico” (PTF) voltado para escolares com queixas de dificuldades de leitura e escrita. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar os aspectos teórico-metodológicos envolvidos na elaboração de plano terapêutico embasado na teoria bakhtiniana de gêneros do discurso. A exposição de caráter teórico-metodológico está dividida em duas seções: na primeira são abordadas as bases conceituais e, na sequência, são apresentados os aspectos metodológicos para a implementação do referido PTF.

Looking at a contrast object before speaking boosts referential informativeness, but is not essential

Variation in referential form has traditionally been accounted for by theoretical frameworks focusing on linguistic and discourse features. Despite the explosion of interest in eye tracking methods in psycholinguistics, the role of visual scanning behaviour in informative reference production is yet to be comprehensively investigated. Here we examine the relationship between speakers' fixations to relevant referents and the form of the referring expressions they produce. Overall, speakers were fully informative across simple and (to a lesser extent) more complex displays, providing appropriately modified referring expressions to enable their addressee to locate the target object. Analysis of contrast fixations revealed that looking at a contrast object boosts but is not essential for full informativeness. Contrast fixations which take place immediately before speaking provide the greatest boost. Informative referring expressions were also associated with later speech onsets than underinformative ones. Based on the finding that fixations during speech planning facilitate but do not fully predict informative referring, direct visual scanning is ruled out as a prerequisite for informativeness. Instead, pragmatic expectations of informativeness may play a more important role. Results are consistent with a goal-based link between eye movements and language processing, here applied for the first time to production processes.

Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

Many phonological processes can be affected by segmental context spanning word boundaries, which often lead to variable outcomes. This paper tests the idea that some of this variability can be explained by reference to production planning. We examine coronal stop deletion (CSD), a variable process conditioned by preceding and upcoming phonological context, in a corpus of spontaneous British English speech, as a means of investigating a number of variables associated with planning: Prosodic boundary strength, word frequency, conditional probability of the following word, and speech rate. From the perspective of production planning, (1) prosodic boundaries should affect deletion rate independently of following context; (2) given the locality of production planning, the effect of the following context should decrease at stronger prosodic boundaries; and (3) other factors affecting planning scope should modulate the effect of upcoming phonological material above and beyond the modulating effect of prosodic boundaries. We build a statistical model of CSD realization, using pause length as a quantitative proxy for boundary strength, and find support for these predictions. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that the locality of production planning constrains variability in speech production, and have practical implications for work on CSD and other variable processes.

Pitch height as part of speech plans: Evidence from response to auditory startle

In Mandarin, pitch contour denotes phonemic contrast while pitch height does not serve as a phonemic parameter. When triggered by a startling auditory stimulus (SAS, >120dB), prepared Mandarin CV syllable [ba] is elicited rapidly while its pitch contour remains unperturbed, suggesting that phonemic details are included in the speech plan and susceptible for rapid release under feedforward control [Chiu and Gick 2014, JASA-EL, 322-328]. Pitch height, however, is elevated in SAS-induced responses. It is not clear whether or not pitch height can be independently pre-specified in speech plans. The current study uses the startle paradigm to tackle this question by comparing general Mandarin speakers and Mandarin speakers with pitch training. Preliminary results show that specific pitch height can be prepared and is preserved in SAS-induced responses. More unperturbed pitch height is observed in pitch-trained speakers’ responses than in general Mandarin speakers’ responses. While slight and limited elevation may occur at the beginning of SAS-induced responses, the preservation of the absolute pitch height appears to interact with intended response durations. The results suggest that absolute pitch height, even when not acting as a phonemic parameter, can be pre-specified in speech plans and released by a SAS both rapidly and accurately.

Discovering functional units of the human tongue during speech from cine- and tagged-MRI

Tongue motion during speech or other lingual behaviors involves synergies of locally deforming regions, or functional units. Determining functional units will provide an insight into the mechanisms of normal and pathological muscle coordination, leading to improvement in understanding of speech production and treatment or rehabilitation procedures. In this work, we present an approach to determining functional units using cine- and tagged-MRI. Functional units are estimated using a sparse non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) framework, learning latent building blocks and the weighting map from motion features from displacements and strain. Current models of gesture production suggest that, during speech planning, talkers select temporal frames prior to specifying the appropriate spatially fixed clusters. Our analysis is intended to parallel this process by using NMF to first identify temporal frames in the data based on change points in motion features, and then to identify the spatially fixed clusters for all the input quantities in each time frame. A spectral clustering is performed on the weighting map of each time interval to define the coherent sub-motions, revealing temporally varying tongue synergies. Synthetic and human tongue data including both controls and patients with glossectomy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are used to define subject/task-specific functional units of the tongue in localized regions.

Aeroacoustic consequences of tongue troughs in labiodentals

It has long been accepted that the main constriction for fricatives /f, v/ is formed by the lower lip pressing against the upper teeth, thus allowing the tongue to freely coarticulate with preceding and following segments. Here, electromagnetic articulometry data were obtained from 5 subjects in a study of tongue troughs, defined as a discontinuity in anticipatory coarticulation, such as when the tongue drops during a bilabial consonant in /ii/ context. The corpus included /f/ and /v/ in VC(C)V contexts, where V = /i/ for C= /v/, and V = {/i a u/} for C= /f/. The tongue moved down and back for /f/ in all vowel contexts; in /iC(C)i/ context, the troughs were deeper for long (VCCV) than short labial consonants, as predicted, and deeper for /f/ than for /p, b, v, m/, which was unexpected. There seems to be a secondary gesture specifying that the tongue be down during labiodental fricatives. Our hypothesis is that lowering the tongue for /f/ ensures that the airflow resistance will be due only to the labiodental constriction, thus providing an aeroacoustic advantage for the onset of turbulence. This is supported by comparison of asymmetric vowel contexts (e.g., /uffi/-/iffu/ tokens); tongue dorsum and blade sensors show the tongue moving quickly away from /i/ to /f/ position, in contrast to movement from /u/ to /f/. Aerodynamic considerations thus appear to be actively incorporated into the speech motor plan. [Work supported by NIH grant DC-002717.]

The effect of noise and second language on turn taking in task-oriented dialog

Previous studies of floor transfer offsets (FTO), the interval between one talker stopping and the other starting, suggest that normal conversation requires interlocutors to predict when each other will finish their turn. We hypothesized that noise and/or speaking in a second language (L2) would result in longer FTOs due to increased processing demands. Conversations from 20 pairs of normal hearing, native-Danish talkers were elicited using the Diapix task in four conditions consisting of combinations of language (Danish vs. English) and noise background (quiet vs. ICRA 7 noise presented at 70 dBA). Overall, participants took longer to complete the task in both noise and in L2 indicating that both factors reduced communication efficiency. However, L2 had very little effect beyond completion time, likely because the participants were very good in English. In contrast to our predictions, in the presence of noise, the median of the FTO distribution decreased by approximately 30ms and the standard deviation decreased by approximately 10%. However, the average duration of interpausal units (i.e., utterances of continuous speech) increased by 40% in noise. These findings are consistent with talkers holding their turn for longer, allowing more time for speech planning.

Discourse prosody planning in native (L1) and nonnative (L2) (L1-Bengali) English: a comparative study

This paper conducts a comparative study between L1 and L2 (L1 Bengali) English discourse level speech planning to investigate differences between L1 and L2 English speaker groups in the organization of discourse-level speech planning. For this purpose, English speech of 10 L1 English and 40 L1 Bengali speakers of the same discourse are analyzed in terms of using prosodic and acoustic cues by applying hierarchical discourse prosody framework. From this analysis, between-group differences in discourse level speech planning are found through the speech rate, locations of discourse boundary breaks as well as size and scope of speech planning and chunking units. Result of analysis shows that the speech rate of L1 English speakers is higher than that of L2 English speakers, L2 English speakers contain more break boundary than that of the L1 English speakers at every discourse level in the organization, which exhibit the fact that L2 English speakers use more intermediate chunking units and larger scale planning units than that of L1 English speakers. Between-group differences are also found through the analysis of phrase component at prosodic phrase level and accent component at the prosodic word level. These findings can be attributed to L2 English speakers' improper phrasing, improper word level prominence and the ambiguous difference between content words and function words. The study concludes that the deficiencies in English strategy for L1 Bengali speakers' discourse-level speech planning compared to L1 English speakers are due to the influence of L1 (Bengali) prosody at the L2 discourse level.

Signs of dysarthria in adults with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

The aim of the study was to investigate how adults with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) performed on dysarthria and intelligibility tests compared with a control group. Ten participants with confirmed 22q11.2 deletion, five males and five females with a mean age of 31 years (range: 19-49), were compared with a control group matched for gender and age (five males and five females, mean age: 32 years, range: 19-49). Assessment of non-verbal and verbal tasks reflecting respiration, phonation, oral motor function, velopharyngeal function, articulation, and prosody was performed as well as the Swedish Test of Intelligibility (STI). All assessments were made by two raters; inter-rater and intra-rater reliability was acceptable. The participants with 22q11DS had significantly more problems than the control group on all investigated dimensions except the STI. Overall, the severity of their speech deviation was rated as mild to moderate. The largest difficulties were found regarding speech respiration, phonation, oral motor function, and velopharyngeal function. The results of the present study suggest that a neurological etiology could be added to the previously described structural etiology explaining the speech difficulties found in 22q11DS. Signs of difficulties in both speech motor planning and speech motor programming were found. Further studies are needed to confirm the results, as are studies of the association between structural brain abnormalities and neurological speech symptoms. For clinical purposes, it is important that clinicians have knowledge about the variable speech symptoms that may occur in individuals with 22q11DS and that they be aware of the complexity of the etiology of such speech symptoms. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Apraxia of speech and cerebellar mutism syndrome: a case report

BackgroundCerebellar mutism syndrome (CMS) or posterior fossa syndrome (PFS) consists of a constellation of neuropsychiatric, neuropsychological and neurogenic speech and language deficits. It is most commonly observed in children after posterior fossa tumor surgery. The most prominent feature of CMS is mutism, which generally starts after a few days after the operation, has a limited duration and is typically followed by motor speech deficits. However, the core speech disorder subserving CMS is still unclear.Case presentationThis study investigates the speech and language symptoms following posterior fossa medulloblastoma surgery in a 12-year-old right-handed boy. An extensive battery of formal speech (DIAS = Diagnostic Instrument Apraxia of Speech) and language tests were administered during a follow-up of 6 weeks after surgery. Although the neurological and neuropsychological (affective, cognitive) symptoms of this patient are consistent with Schmahmann’s syndrome, the speech and language symptoms were markedly different from what is typically described in the literature. In-depth analyses of speech production revealed features consistent with a diagnosis of apraxia of speech (AoS) while ataxic dysarthria was completely absent. In addition, language assessments showed genuine aphasic deficits as reflected by distorted language production and perception, wordfinding difficulties, grammatical disturbances and verbal fluency deficits.ConclusionTo the best of our knowledge this case might be the first example that clearly demonstrates that a higher level motor planning disorder (apraxia) may be the origin of disrupted speech in CMS. In addition, identification of non-motor linguistic disturbances during follow-up add to the view that the cerebellum not only plays a crucial role in the planning and execution of speech but also in linguistic processing. Whether the cerebellum has a direct or indirect role in motor speech planning needs to be further investigated.

Principles of motor learning in treatment for apraxia of speech

Principles of motor learning in treatment for apraxia of speech

СВЯЗЬ ПОЛА НОСИТЕЛЯ ЯЗЫКА С ТАКТИКО- СТРАТЕГИЧЕСКИМ ПЛАНИРОВАНИЕМ РЕЧИ

СВЯЗЬ ПОЛА НОСИТЕЛЯ ЯЗЫКА С ТАКТИКО- СТРАТЕГИЧЕСКИМ ПЛАНИРОВАНИЕМ РЕЧИ

Subcortical Effects on Voice and Fluency in Dysarthria: Observations from Subthalamic Nucleus Stimulation.

ObjectiveParkinson’s disease (PD), caused by basal ganglia dysfunction, is associated with motor disturbances including dysarthria. Stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus, a preferred treatment targeting basal ganglia function, improves features of the motor disorder, but has uncertain effects on speech.We studied speech during contrasting stimulation states to reveal subcortical effects on voice and articulation. Measures were made on selected samples of spontaneous and repeated speech.MethodsPersons with Parkinson’s disease (PWP) who had undergone bilateral deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (DBS-STN) provided spontaneous speech samples and then repeated portions of their monologue both on and off stimulation. Excerpts were presented in a listening protocol probing intelligibility. Also analysed were a continuous phrase repetition task and a second spontaneous speech sample. Fundamental frequency (F0), harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR), jitter, shimmer and fluency were measured in these three speech samples performed with DBS stimulation on and off.ResultsDuring subcortical stimulation, spontaneous excerpts were less intelligible than repeated excerpts. F0 and HNR were higher and shimmer was decreased in repetition and stimulation. Articulatory dysfluencies were increased for spontaneous speech and during stimulation in all three speech samples.ConclusionDeep brain stimulation disrupts fluency and improves voice in spontaneous speech, reflecting an inverse influence of subcortical systems on articulatory posturing and laryngeal mechanisms. Better voice and less dysfluency in repetition may occur because an external model reduces the speech planning burden, as seen for gait and arm reach. These orthogonal results for fluency versus phonatory competence may account for ambivalent reports from dysarthric speakers and reveal the complexity of subcortical control of motor speech.