Vowel Space Expansion Sensorimotor Adaptation

NCT ID: NCT06233513

Last Updated: 2025-12-17

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

RECRUITING

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

117 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2024-02-15

Study Completion Date

2026-04-30

Brief Summary

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The purpose of this research study is to understand how the brain processes and controls speech in healthy people. The investigators are doing this research because it will help identify the mechanisms that allow people to perceive their own speech errors and to learn new speech sounds. 117 participants will be enrolled into this part of the study and can expect to be on study between 1 day (Experiment 1) and 4 weeks (Experiment 2).

Detailed Description

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The overall study (Establishing the clinical utility of sensorimotor adaptation for speech rehabilitation) aims to understand how cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes are integrated in the control of speech movements. The investigators study how this complex skill is performed in healthy speakers to understand how this system functions, how this skill relates to the perception of speech, and what role different parts of the brain play in this process. Different studies look at how speech motor control is executed, maintained, and changed. Overall, the study will recruit 329 participants over the course of 5 years. Participants can expect to be on study for up to 4 weeks.

The entire study is composed of 8 experiments and 6 interventions. The present record represents Experiments 1-4: 1) Generalization of Vowel Space Expansion to Untrained Words and Vowels; 2) Retention of Vowel Space Expansion After Training in Multiple Sessions; 3) Vowel Space Expansion Training With Connected Speech, and 4)The Relationship Between Acuity, Variability, and Adaptation in Vowels. The paradigms in Experiments 1-3 all involve speech production under conditions of altered auditory feedback, while Experiment 4 is a correlative analysis that compares data from Experiments 1 and 2.

The Experiment 1 paradigm tests how the vowel space expansion induced by sensorimotor adaptation generalizes to untrained items in a single session. Participants will produce four training words (bead, bad, bod, and booed) under a vowel centralization feedback paradigm in which auditory feedback is altered, training them to produce these words with more vowel contrast. In addition to these trained words, eight test items will be produced in pre-training and post-training phases only. We will compare to measure how learning transfers across words that share the same vowel (test words: keep, cap, cop, coop) or whose vowels are intermediate to those of the trained words and which share consonants with the trained words (test words: bid, bud, bade, bode).

The Experiment 2 paradigm tests how the vowel space expansion induced by sensorimotor adaptation is retained over time. Participants will complete eight sessions of the vowel centralization sensorimotor adaptation paradigm over four weeks, producing four training words (bead, bad, bod, and booed) under conditions of altered auditory feedback that train them to produce these words with more vowel contrast. We will measure changes in produced vowels at the start of each session in a baseline phase to assess how much retained across days and weeks.

The Experiment 3 paradigm tests whether vowel space expansion can be evoked by a vowel centralization feedback paradigm applied to running speech (full sentences) rather than single words in healthy speakers. Participants will produce sentences from the Harvard corpus while their speech feedback is altered to centralize vowel feedback. The investigators will measure how working vowel space increases under this paradigm.

Experiment 4 is a correlative analysis which tests whether sensory acuity and speech production variability can predict magnitude of sensorimotor adaptation in interventions 1 and 2. Auditory acuity will be measured through a phoneme discrimination task in which vowel sounds are played to participants over headphones; somatosensory acuity will be measured through a tactile discrimination task in which participants report the orientation (horizontal or vertical) of the gratings on a plastic dome pressed lightly into the tongue. Speech production variability will be measured as the formant variability in the baseline phase of the sensorimotor adaptation experiments in interventions 1 and 2. These measures will be correlated with sensorimotor adaptation magnitude found in the prior interventions.

Conditions

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Speech

Study Design

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Allocation Method

NA

Intervention Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Primary Study Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Blinding Strategy

NONE

Study Groups

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Healthy Adult Speakers

healthy adult participants across the lifespan in three groups:18-35, 36-55, and 56+

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Exp 3 Speaking Task

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Participant will sit in front of a computer screen in a quiet room and to produce speech based on what is on the screen. Participant may see real words or nonsense words to read. Investigators may play sounds through headphones and ask the participant to repeat them. Participant speech will be recorded by a microphone. This task takes about one hour to complete.

Interventions

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Exp 3 Speaking Task

Participant will sit in front of a computer screen in a quiet room and to produce speech based on what is on the screen. Participant may see real words or nonsense words to read. Investigators may play sounds through headphones and ask the participant to repeat them. Participant speech will be recorded by a microphone. This task takes about one hour to complete.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Other Intervention Names

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vowel space expansion

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* English-speaking adults
* normal hearing and speech
* no history of stroke or neurological conditions

Exclusion Criteria

* Native language other than English
* Any neurological disorders other than the disorder of interest
* Any history of hearing disorders
* Uncorrected vision problems that prevent participants from seeing visually-presented stimuli
* Significant cognitive impairments that prevent participants from carrying out the task or from giving informed consent
* Vulnerable populations (minors and prisoners)
Minimum Eligible Age

18 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sponsors

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National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

NIH

Sponsor Role collaborator

University of Wisconsin, Madison

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Responsibility Role SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

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Carrie Niziolek, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Locations

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University of Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Site Status RECRUITING

Countries

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United States

Central Contacts

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Carrie Niziolek, PhD

Role: CONTACT

608-890-0192

Facility Contacts

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Carrie Niziolek, PhD

Role: primary

608-890-0192

Related Links

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https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05723575

Link to study record for experiment 7 \[NCT05723575\]

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05286658

Link to study record for experiment 5 \[NCT05286658\]

Other Identifiers

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Protocol Version 10/31/2021

Identifier Type: OTHER

Identifier Source: secondary_id

A481800

Identifier Type: OTHER

Identifier Source: secondary_id

1R01DC019134-01A1

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: secondary_id

View Link

2017-1128 Adaptation (Exp 1-4)

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id