Analysis of rhythmic entrainment in speech production using real-time magnetic resonance imaging

It has been shown that subjects may recruit extra-linguistic articulators during the rhythmic production of speech (Tiede, 2010), that sympathetic head movement is associated with dysfluencies in running speech (Hadar, 1984), and that the magnitude of this activity positively correlates with both speaking rate and increased effort in accelerating speech production tasks (Hadar, 1991; Tiede, 2011). It is unclear at what level of linguistic organization this entrainment occurs. We examined patterns of articulation and head movement during an accelerated repetitive speech task involving multi-gestural segments, in order to gain more insights into the coordinative bases of this behavior. Real-time magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine the production of paired English words, contrasting along various articulations, e.g., “cop-top,” “kid-kim,” “flee-free,” “muck-duck.” Subjects' upper airways were imaged in the midsagittal plane while producing trochaic repetitions of each word pair in time to an accel...