Hypernasality correlates with acoustics and aerodynamics

Kim, Soo Kyung; Yun, Won Tae; Cho, Sang Ki; Ko, Seung O; Shin, Hyo Keun; Kim, Oh Hwan

Abstract

The speech problems in patients with Cleft Palate have been managed by clinicians because of remained articulation disorders after surgical operation. Speech evaluations of VPI are recently used to non-invasive aerodynamic and acoustic methods which diagnose the resonance and articulation disorders of cleft palate speakers. However, many researchers are apt to find the speech characteristics of Cleft Palate using individual acoustic, aerodynamic and physiological methods. The aim of this study was to find the correlation of the hypernasality between acoustic and aerodynamic parameters. Ten adult control group and three cleft palate participated to this study. Test words were composed to meaningless polysyllabic words contained stop, affricated and fricative sounds. Nasometer II, CSL and Aerophone II were used to measure Nasalance, vowel formants(F1, F2 and F3) aad bandwidths(BW1, BW2 and BW3), airflow, volume and air pressure. Correlation of hypernasality between acoustic and aerodynamic are treated statistically by SPSS porogram. The results are as follows: (1) Hypernasal correlations with acoustic are statistically significant formant 1, vowel formant 2 and Bandwidth 1 with r=.903 (<0.01), r=.721(<0.05) and r=.801(<0.05), respectively. (2) Hypernasality correlation with aerodynamic are sttisticalyy significant airflow and volum with r=.870(<0.01) and r=.000(<0.01), respectively.