Nasalance in the Speech of Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Hearing Loss

Abstract

Three new tests were introduced in this study to compare nasal resonance and speaking time of 30 children 8 to 11 years old who were profoundly deaf with that of 30 children with normal hearing in a matched control group. The ANS-P plane was introduced to position the palatometer sound separation plate. This enabled the plate to be brought easily and repeatedly into the desired standard position despite widely varying facial contours of the subjects. The findings from this study showed the group with hearing loss had significantly more nasalance than did the normal group when nasal consonants were absent and significantly less when an utterance was loaded heavily with nasal consonants. These differences were interpreted as evidence of some limitation in the ability of the children with hearing loss to monitor and control nasal versus oral sound emission. Speaking time was longer in the group of children with hearing loss but was not related to the nasalance score.