Articulography and functional neuroimaging are two major tools for studying the neurobiology of s... more Articulography and functional neuroimaging are two major tools for studying the neurobiology of speech production. Until now, however, it has generally not been possible to use both in the same experimental setup because of technical incompatibilities between the two methodologies. Here we describe results from a novel articulography system dubbed Magneto-articulography for the Assessment of Speech Kinematics (MASK), used for the first time to obtain kinematic profiles of orofacial movements during speech together with concurrent magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements of neuromotor brain activity. MASK was used to characterise speech kinematics in a healthy adult, and the results were compared to measurements from the same participant with a conventional electromagnetic articulography (EMA) setup. We also characterised speech movement kinematics with MASK in a group of ten typically developing children, aged 8-12 years. Analyses targeted the gestural landmarks of the utterances /ida/, /ila/ and reiterated productions of /pataka/. These results demonstrate that the MASK technique can be used to reliably characterise movement profiles and kinematic parameters that reflect development of speech motor control, together with MEG measurements of brain responses from speech sensorimotor cortex. This new capability sets the stage for cross-disciplinary efforts to understand the developmental neurobiology of human speech production.
The articulatory realisation of phonemic vowel length contrasts is still imperfectly understood. ... more The articulatory realisation of phonemic vowel length contrasts is still imperfectly understood. Australian English (AusE) /5:/ and /5/ differ primarily in duration and therefore provide an ideal case for examining the articulatory properties of long vs. short vowels. Patterns of compression, acceleration ratios and VC coordination were examined using electromagnetic articulography (EMA) in /pV:p/ and /pVp/ syllables produced by three speakers of AusE at two speech rates. Short vowels were less compressible and had higher acceleration ratios than long vowels. VC rimes had proportionately earlier coda onsets than V:C rimes. These findings suggest that long and short vowels are characterised by different patterns of both intra-and intergestural organisation in AusE.
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Papers by LOUISE RATKO