Affiliations: [a] Cleft. Net. East, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK | [b] City University, London, UK | [c] Speech and Language Therapy Department/Centre for Nursing and Allied Health Professions Research and Evidence Based Practice, Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust, London, UK | [d] North Thames Regional Cleft Service, London, UK | [e] Institute of Child Health, UCL, London, UK
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Debbie Sell, PhD, Speech and Language Th erapy Department, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, Great Ormond Street, London, WC1N 3JH, UK. E-mail: Debbie.Sell@gosh.nhs.uk.
Abstract: Objective:To investigate the impact of the phonetic content of two sentence sets on speech outcomes, specifically the effects of nasal phonemes. Method:Audio-video recordings of a consecutive series of 15 participants (age range 4–22 years), with cleft palate (syndromic or non-syndromic), with and without velopharyngeal dysfunction were taken. Participants repeated Sentence Set 1 (with nasals across sentences) and Sentence Set 2 (without nasals except the three nasal target sentences) during a routine speech recording. Two experienced Specialist Speech and Language Therapists, blinded to the study’s purpose, analyzed participants’ speech using the Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech-Augmented (CAPS-A). On day 1, recordings included Sentence Set 1. On day 2, 23 days later, recordings included Sentence Set 2. Main results:The difference between Sentence Set 1 and Sentence Set 2 ‘total scores’ (sum of scores on all CAPS-A parameters) was significant. The Pearson Product Moment showed high correlation. A Wilcoxon test revealed a significant difference between Sets 1 and 2 on the hypernasality parameter, and this alone accounted for the significant difference in total scores. Conclusion:The inclusion or exclusion of nasal consonants in the sentence set significantly affected perceptual ratings of hypernasality but none of the other CAPS-A parameters, highlighting the need for further investigation into perceptual nasality ratings.
