Unlocking speech: exploring articulatory techniques for cleft palate +/- cleft lip care

Speech articulation is largely hidden from view, with the main articulator, the tongue mostly invisible during speech production. Since around the 1980s, speech and language therapists have been able to unlock these hidden articulations using instruments that image the articulators- revealing differences in the speech of children with cleft palate +/- cleft lip that are not wholly attributable to anatomical differences.
Tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, electropalatography, and ultrasound tongue imaging are powerful techniques for revealing these hidden articulations and, in the case of electropalatography and ultrasound, remediating the same errors by revealing to speakers how to change their articulation.

This presentation will explore what we have learnt about the speech of people with cleft palate +/- L from articulatory instrumentation. I will explain how this instrumentation can change our thinking about both the nature of speech errors and speech interventions and discuss the barriers and enablers to implementing such techniques in cleft palate care. I will conclude with a focus on the future of articulatory instrumentation in cleft palate care, that is, the integration of ultrasound tongue imaging and machine learning.