言语知觉的运动理论（Motor theory of speech perception），是一种认为人们通过辨认发音的声道姿势而非语言的发音习惯来理解话语的假说。它最初声称言语知觉是通过一个人类天生特有的特殊模块完成的。虽然这个模块在近几年的理论中得到认证，但人们还是认为言语运动系统的角色不仅是产生发音，还有检测它们。

相比于言语知觉这个领域，该假设在领域外获得的关注更多。而镜像神经元的发现使得其关注度更加高。镜像神经元将运动的产生与认知联系起来，其中包括了由声道产生的运动。

该理论最初由阿尔文·利伯曼和富兰克林·库珀于20世纪50年代在哈斯金斯实验室提出。并由唐纳德·尚克韦勒、迈克尔·斯塔德特·肯尼迪、伊格内修斯·马丁利、卡罗尔·福勒以及道格拉斯·惠伦进一步发展。

The motor theory of speech pe****tion is the hypothesis that people perceive spoken words by identifying the vocal tract gestures with which they are pronounced rather than by identifying the sound patterns that speech generates. It originally claimed that speech pe****tion is done through a specialized module that is innate and human-specific. Though the idea of a module has been qualified in more recent versions of the theory, the idea remains that the role of the speech motor system is not only to produce speech articulations but also to detect them.