Conditioning prostheses viewed from the standpoint of speech adaptation.

Subjects who had adapted to experimental alveolar-palatal prostheses for 2 weeks were able to speak naturally with them after a lapse of a month. Physiologic data on jaw motions and tongue-palate contacts during speech showed a rapid return to compensatory articulatory patterns. A single subject who had previously adapted to an experimental prosthesis over a period of a week made the same type of compensatory jaw adjustments when speaking with the prosthesis again 1 year later.