The Relationship Between Three Oral Breath Pressure Ratios and Ratings of Severity of Nasality for Talkers With Cleft Palate

Abstract

Oral manometer ratios and perceptual judgments of speech frequently are used clinically to assess velopharyngeal function. Barnes and Morris (1) recently noted that there is not yet sufficient information about the relationship between these measures for meaningful interpretation of obtained clinical observations. The purpose of this research was to provide information about the relationship between each of three manometer ratio measures and perceptual judgments nasality. Specifically, the following question was asked: to what extent can oral manometer ratios differen— tiate speakers with hypernasal speech from patients with normal voice quality? Method Subjects. One hundred (100) persons with histories of velopharyngeal inadequacy were studied. They were selected from a series of patients receiving treatment at the Cleft Palate Clinic, Indiana University Medical Center. Subjects ranged in age from 3 years to 20 years (X = 9.65 years) and demonstrated a variety of physical management procedures for cleft palate. Perceptual Judgments. Two experienced speech pathologists independently rated each talker for presence or absence of hypernasality. In each case where hypernasality was judged to be present, hypernasality was rated on two degrees of severity: mild or moderate-severe. Perceptual judgments were based on vowels /i/ and /u/ sustained and in sentences: " Who are you " and " We see three geese. " Judgments were made during the initial stage of clinical evaluation of each patient. Thus, live speech samples rather than tape recorded samples were rated.