Physiologic Development of Speech

Principal Investigator:
Thomas Campbell, PhD

Background:
Recent studies have provided a comprehensive, systematic understanding of the physiologic mechanisms underlying early speech development. Few studies have examined these mechanisms in speech disordered children.

Project:
This project will characterize typically developing children and children with mild-to-severe speech impairment using recently developed physiologic and phonetic methods. The clinical population will include 240 children diagnosed with speech delay of unknown origin and 60 children with normal developing speech. Physiologic measurements will be related to observed phonetic and prosodic output using computational modeling (neural networks) to define the distribution of speech impairment in children with speech delay of unknown origin.