Supporting Clinical Decision Making
Supporting Clinical Decision Making
We aim to produce research and frameworks that clinicians can use to:
- Strengthen diagnostic reasoning
- Interpret complex speech profiles
- Connect theory to real-world clinical decision making
Our work bridges research and practice, providing clinicians with tools and frameworks that support evidence-based assessment and intervention.
The Colorado Motor Speech Framework (CMSF)
The Colorado Motor Speech Framework (CMSF) is a core contribution of the lab and reflects our commitment to clinically meaningful theory. It is a conceptual framework that organizes motor speech disorders around underlying mechanisms of speech motor planning, subsystem coordination, and motor execution.
Clinicians may find the CMSF useful for:
- Teaching and supervising students
- Organizing differential diagnosis
- Interpreting mixed or atypical speech profiles
- Linking perceptual features to underlying motor mechanisms
Key Research Themes
Speech Naturalness and Intelligibility
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Respiratory-Laryngeal Coordination
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Motor Speech Variability
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Measurement approaches in Dysarthria and Apraxia of Speech
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Questions We Help Clinicians Answer
Methods We Study
- Perceptual evaluation of speech features
- Acoustic measures
- Kinematic measures
- Repetitive and connected speech tasks
- Subsystem coordination
Why It Matters
- Helps clinicians understand what different measures reveal about speech performance
- Connects measurable speech behaviors to underlying motor control mechanisms
- Supports more informed interpretation of assessment findings
- Provides evidence that can strengthen clinical judgment and decision-making.
- Helps identify meaningful targets for intervention.