Effects of Biofeedback on Control and Generalization of Nasalization in Typical Speakers

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of biofeedback on control of nasalization in individuals with typical speech. Method Forty-eight individuals with typical speech attempted to increase and decrease vowel nasalization. During training, stimuli consisted of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) tokens with the center vowels /a/ or /i/ in either a nasal or nonnasal phonemic context (e.g., /mim/ vs. /bib/), depending on the participant’s training group. Half of the participants had access to augmentative visual feedback during training, which was based on a less-invasive acoustic, accelerometric measure of vowel nasalization—the Horii oral–nasal coupling (HONC) score. During pre- and posttraining assessments, acoustically based nasalance was also measured from the center vowels /a/, /i/, /æ/, and /u/ of CVCs in both nasal and nonnasal contexts. Results Linear regressions indicated that both phonemic contexts (nasal or nonnasal) and the presence of augmentative visual feedback during training were significant predictors for changes in nasalance scores from pre- to posttraining. Conclusions Participants were able to change the nasalization of their speech following a training period with HONC biofeedback. Future work is necessary to examine the effect of such training in individuals with velopharyngeal dysfunction.