Motor Speech Disorders: A Cross-Language Perspective

Motor speech disorders are a common accompaniment of a whole range of neurological conditions, from stroke, brain injury and Parkinson’s disease through to many rarer conditions. This book aims to aid understanding of the nature of motor speech disorders from a cross-language perspective, in contrast to the largely English-centric nature of research and practice recommendations to date. The book looks not just at how these motor speech disorders are assessed and treated in other countries, but also examines how underlying speech impairments differ according to the language someone speaks. The book studies the underlying neurological, neurophysiological and neurophonetic characteristics of motor speech disorders in different language contexts, and discusses the implications these have for clinical rehabilitation. This significantly adds to debates around the theoretical understanding and clinical management of motor speech disorders.

Nick Miller is Professor of Motor Speech Disorders at Newcastle University, UK. His main research interests include apraxia, dysarthria and dysphagia and the psychosocial impact of neurogenic communication disorders.

Anja Lowit is Reader in Speech and Language Therapy at Strathclyde University, UK. Her research interests include dysarthria, prosodic disorders, acoustic analysis of disordered speech, treatment effectiveness and the development of outcome measures.