Communicating by Language: The Speech Process.

This document reports on a conference focused on speech problems. The main objective of these discussions was to facilitate a deeper understanding of human communication through interaction of conference participants with colleagues in other disciplines. Topics discussed included speech production, feedback, speech perception, and development of language and language skills. Five levels of discourse were dealt with--the acoustical, the neurologic, the articulatory, the psychologic or behavioral, and various model languages. A concept of the speech-production system discussed was a system that has an output of phonemes and an input of control instructions. The discussion of the concept of feedback revealed that, depending upon the level of complexity of the speech response that was under discussion, the conference participants had a difficult time settling on how many and how extensive had to be the feedback loops that would be involved. In the consideration of speech perception, conference participants again had difficulty in reaching a decision on the definition of the stimulus for speech perception. A review is given of the schedule of development of certain kinds of speech and language behaviors. Conclusions include: (1) Speech production is a general kind of complicated motor behavior; and (2) Time-variant characteristics of speech signals are less identifiable anatomically than are spectral characteristics. (CK)