Measuring mouth movements to improve speech in children with dysarthria
Quantifying articulatory performance in children with dysarthria: Development of an automated metric for clinical use
This project builds an automatic tool that measures how children with cerebral palsy move their mouths when they speak to help speech therapists target and improve clarity.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Wisconsin-Madison NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Madison, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11324958 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
If you join, your child would provide short speech recordings of words and sounds. The research team will use acoustic and articulatory analyses plus computer algorithms to turn those recordings into an automatic, continuous score tied to specific speech sounds. They'll compare those scores to how understandable speech is and test the measure in children with cerebral palsy and dysarthria. The goal is a user-friendly clinical tool that helps therapists pick targets and track progress objectively.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Children with cerebral palsy who have dysarthria and can produce spoken words or syllables, roughly ages 2–11 years, would be ideal candidates.
Not a fit: Children who are nonverbal, adults, or people without speech motor disorders are unlikely to receive direct benefit from this project.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: Could give therapists objective, speech-sound-based measurements to personalize therapy and monitor improvement over time.
How similar studies have performed: Laboratory studies have linked articulatory measures (like vowel space and F2 slope) to intelligibility, but creating an automated clinical tool from these findings is a new and relatively untested step.
Where this research is happening
Madison, United States
- University of Wisconsin-Madison — Madison, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Hustad, Katherine C — University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Study coordinator: Hustad, Katherine C
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.