The speed-curvature power law in tongue movements of repetitive speech

PLoS One. 2019 Mar 18;14(3):e0213851. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213851. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

The speed-curvature power law is a celebrated law of motor control expressing a relation between the kinematic property of speed and the geometric property of curvature. We aimed to assess whether speech movements obey this law just as movements from other domains do. We describe a metronome-driven speech elicitation paradigm designed to cover a wide range of speeds. We recorded via electromagnetic articulometry speech movements in sequences of the form /CV…/ from nine speakers (five German, four English) speaking at eight distinct rates. First, we demonstrate that the paradigm of metronome-driven manipulations results in speech movement data consistent with earlier reports on the kinematics of speech production. Second, analysis of our data in their full three-dimensions and using advanced numerical differentiation methods offers stronger evidence for the law than that reported in previous studies devoted to its assessment. Finally, we demonstrate the presence of a clear rate dependency of the power law's parameters. The robustness of the speed-curvature relation in our datasets lends further support to the hypothesis that the power law is a general feature of human movement. We place our results in the context of other work in movement control and consider implications for models of speech production.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Biomechanical Phenomena
  • Electronic Data Processing
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Language
  • Male
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Speech / physiology*
  • Tongue / physiology*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work has been supported by the European Research Council (AdG 249440, https://erc.europa.eu/) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 1287, Project C04, http://www.dfg.de/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.