Since the first edition in 1985, the series of international Nijmegen conferences on speech motor control have shown tremendous progress in this area. The initial focus was on motor control issues in stuttering. The second conference (1990) highlighted the development of more general motor control models and the inclusion of higher order psychomotor and psycholinguistic functions, broadening the scope to other motor speech disorders than stuttering. At the third conference (1996), more emphasis was put on the emerging field of brain imaging. In addition, development of speech motor control became a prominent topic. At the fourth edition in 2001, we witnessed the introduction of important theoretical neurophysiological and neurobehavioral concepts, and a growing interest in the ‘interface’ between higher order cognitive/psycholinguistic processes and speech production. The fifth conference (2006) focussed on the development of interdisciplinary collaboration in the field of speech motor research on populations with and without speech disorders. Integration was the key-concept: integration of principles and models of perception-action relations in general and speech as an audio-visual-speech-motor performance in particular; biomechanical, and neurobiological aspects of motor control in general, and the biomechanics and neurological control mechanisms of speech in particular; the genetics of motor learning (automation) and of language disorders in general, and of speech motor learning and phonology in particular.
Continuing the tradition, the sixth edition of the International Speech Motor Conference was held from June 8-11, 2011. In the past five editions, we had witnessed the fundamental insights in speech motor control processes gaining shape, showing a stronger embedding in general aspects of the origin, development and maintenance of cognitive, linguistic and motor processes as well as demonstrating their unique properties as part of the human genetic make-up. In the sixth conference, we encouraged participants to take this evolvement a step further and report on their research in the following areas:
Relation between perception-production processes in speech
New developments in computational models of speech motor control
New applications in speech-technology and rehabilitation of speech-motor functions;
Recent findings on neural networks involved in communication, in particular with respect to speech-motor functions in both normal and speech-disordered populations
New developments in genetic research on speech motor functions and disorders
Origin and development of speech functions
Like previous years, we invited well-known established scholars as well as promising relatively new researchers who have made important contributions to these areas to discuss recent trends, new insights and future prospects.