Investigation of muscle activation in speech production based on an articulatory model

In the speech acquisition process, a person starts by learning muscle activation patterns (motor commands) to control their speech organs. However, the learning process is still a brainteaser. This paper attempts to simulate this learning process using a model based method. The economy and efficiency principles are implemented in the learning process to approach the articulatory target in the somatosensory point of view. The muscle activation patterns for five Japanese vowels were obtained by the proposed learning process. The learned muscle activation patterns were consistent with the empirical data. The results were also evaluated in the articulatory and acoustic space, and these evaluations proved that the proposed method was effective.