Oral motor development

[Katie Alcock]

I've done some work on oral movements in developmental speech
and language disorder for my PhD (*) and when I was working on
this found quite a lot in the literature on developmental disorders of
motor control especially as they relate to developmental speech
and language disorders.

I'm now trying to move into looking at normal speech and language
development in younger children and how this relates to oral motor
control, but can't seem to find if anything has been written on it.  I
know from speech and language therapy acquaintances that there
is really no standardised test of oral motor control for children (I
already knew there wasn't much of one for adults either, only some
items that aren't that great on general aphasia batteries ) but there
really doesn't seem to be much written on the development of
these skills either.  Does anyone know more about this or is it
really something that has been ignored?
What about the development of praxis more generally - again there
is some on developmental dyspraxia and a lot on sign language
development but what about normal praxis development?

Thanks

Katie Alcock







(*) In case you are interested, this paper is already out
Vargha-Khadem, F; Watkins, KE; Price, CJ; Ashburner, J; Alcock,
KJ; Connelly, A; Frackowiak, RSJ; Friston, KJ; Pembrey, ME;
Mishkin, M; Gadian, DG; Passingham, RE (1998): Neural basis of
an inherited speech and language disorder. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the USA (95), 12695–12700.

and this one is coming out later in the year

Alcock, KJ; Passingham, RE; Watkins, K; Vargha-Khadem, F
(2000) Oral dyspraxia in inherited speech and language impairment
and acquired dysphasia.  Brain and Language. probably vol 74(1)
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Katie Alcock
Lecturer
Department of Psychology
City University
Northampton Square
London
EC1V 0HB
Tel (+44) (0)20 7477 0167
Fax (+44) (0)20 7477 8581
www.staff.city.ac.uk/k.j.alcock