Nonspeech oral movements are commonly used in the evaluation and treatment of motor speech disorders. This approach is based on the assumption that the behavior of these structures provides insight into the underlying motor control mechanisms and neurophysiological dysfunction; however, the use of nonspeech movements is a contentious issue. While often criticized, there is little basic neuromotor evidence to either support or refute this assumption. The long-term objectives of this research are to evaluate the hypothesis that speech movements and volitional nonspeech oral movements share underlying motor control mechanisms. Previous tasks selected to examine the relationship between speech and nonspeech oral motor control have exhibited substantive differences in organization and complexity that limit the extent to which a legitimate comparison can be made. This research attempts to more closely equate speech and nonspeech oral gestures to comparable levels of organization and complexity. A motor learning paradigm of nonspeech tasks will be implemented that will consider the goals of movement (e.g., intraoral air pressure, labial displacement), the overlapping nature of sequential gestures, and the degree of learning and automaticity. Articulatory kinematic characteristics of speech and nonspeech gestures will be compared both prior to and subsequent to implementation of the motor learning paradigm. Additionally, generalization of the highly-learned nonspeech tasks to other nonspeech tasks of varying similarity will be evaluated. Once the associations and disparities between speech and nonspeech oral movements have been explored, future research will evaluate whether complex, coordinated nonspeech tasks trained to automaticity will generalize to speech tasks. The transfer of learning from nonspeech behaviors to speech production would implicate a common or related control process for the two motor behaviors.
