LE3 .A278 2023

2023

Lametti, Daniel

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Psychology

Psychology

What role does somatosensory feedback play in speech? The study used real-time manipulations of speech production to examine how somatosensory feedback interacts with auditory feedback during speech. Thirty native English speakers with normal hearing and speech completed a word production task in which the sound of their speech was altered to drive sensorimotor adaptation in speech production. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Both conditions required participants to produce speech overtly and silently and to experience altered auditory feedback during overt speech production. Participants in condition one completed a block of silent articulation after altered auditory feedback. Participants in condition two waited silently for six minutes after altered auditory feedback. A noise-masked word production task measured the amount of compensation (sensorimotor adaptation) for altered auditory feedback following this manipulation. We hypothesized that participants would adapt their speech to altered auditory feedback. However, participants in condition one would show decreased adaptation because of silent articulation compared to participants in condition two. As predicted, participants showed less compensation for altered auditory feedback after silent articulation. We propose that this decrease in compensation was driven by somatosensory error detected during silent articulation. Our research demonstrates that there is a trade-off between auditory and somatosensory feedback during speech and that somatosensory feedback plays an important role in the maintenance of accurate speech.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:4010