Interaction between auditory and oral sensory feedback in speech regulation.

To investigate the interaction between the auditory and oral sensory feedback modalities during speech production lingual vibrotactile thresholds were obtained from subjects in the following conditions: (1) before and after speech production with normal auditory feedback, (2) before and after speech production under exposure to auditory masking, and (3) before and after exposure to auditory masking without performing speech tasks. In addition duration measurements were obtained for selected speech sounds to investigate temporal changes in the articulatory patterns of subjects in the various conditions. Lingual sensory decreases and temporal reorganization were observed only in subjects speaking under auditory masking. These data suggest a balanced interaction between auditory and oral sensory feedback modalities which, when disturbed, results in non-phonemic change in speech production.