My research explores speech motor control as a means to better understand the neural processes underlying speech production in children and adults. From a theoretical perspective, I am interested in the ways in which motor planning, programming and execution are refined in children across development and in adults following structural and functional changes to the speech mechanism. With regard to clinical practice, my work aims to better understand speech motor learning in order to enhance clinical decision making.
In my early work, I examined the complex relationship between motor and linguistic skills in typically developing children. This work contributed to the knowledge base on speech motor development and provided a foundation for research studying motor control in children with speech sound disorders.
My current research involving speech-impaired children primarily centers on childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). CAS is a complex speech motor disorder characterized by difficulty planning and programming movements of the speech articulators, resulting in limited speech production. The findings from our studies have quantified speech motor deficits in children with CAS and distinguished their movements from those produced by children with other speech sound disorders, particularly with increased task demands. I have also been interested in speech motor learning in children with CAS as this population is known to have difficulty acquiring, retaining and generalizing new skills. The data from our speech motor learning studies have shown that continued practice of a movement gesture, even after a perceptual criterion level is achieved, can lead to more longstanding changes in the underlying motor control processes. Building upon this work, we are currently studying the efficacy of motor-based speech intervention for children with CAS using methods that quantify speech motor control. The primary objective of this work is to provide evidence based guidelines for CAS treatment.