Following a well-established Nijmegen (5 editions) - Groningen (6th edition) tradition, the seventh edition of the International Conference on Speech Motor Control will be held in 2017 in Groningen, the Netherlands. This conference, like the ones before, will highlight new trends and state-of-the-art approaches in theoretical and applied research in the area of normal and disordered speech motor control.
Speech motor control is a dynamic research field, that in the past decades has made a tremendous, multidisciplinary development, which is reflected in the Nijmegen – Groningen series of conferences.
In the first edition in
1985 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 and the sixth conferences in
2006 and
2011 focused 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.
The website for the 5th edition (2006, Nijmegen) can be found
here and the website for the 6th edition (2011, Groningen) can be found
here.
Now, we are preparing for the seventh edition of the International Speech Motor Conference, to be held
July 5 - 8, 2017. Following the previous, sixth edition a
book will be published organized around the five major themes in the field: perception-action; speech development; speech disorders; modelling of speech; windows on the brain. Each chapter addresses a specific topic within one of these themes, and thereby not only gives an overview of the current state-of-the-art, but most importantly, highlights (and where necessary, speculates) how in the next decade research in these areas will influence our notions about speech motor processes and how this will have implications for future studies and/or clinical procedures. In the upcoming conference, we encourage participants to take these evolvements a step further and report on their research on the origin, development and maintenance of cognitive, linguistic and motor processes that together determine humans’ most complex motor skill: speaking.
Submissions are encouraged on topics related to normal, unimpaired speech production as well as topics related to impairments of speech production.
Like previous years, we will invite 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.