Nasalance Scores for Normal-Speaking Irish Children

Abstract

Objective To obtain normal nasalance values during the production of a standardized speech sample for Irish children and determine whether significantly different scores exist for different speech stimuli for female and male speakers. Design Mean nasalance scores were obtained for normal-speaking children during the repetition of 16 test sentences that were categorized according to consonant type within the sentences (high-pressure consonants, low-pressure consonants, nasal consonants). Participants Seventy children (36 girls and 34 boys, aged 4 years 11 months to 13 years) with normal articulation, resonance, and voice were included. Procedures Children repeated each of the 16 test sentences individually. The sentences were presented in groups according to consonant type, referred to as sentence categories. Data were collected and analyzed using the Kay nasometer (model 6200.3). Nasalance scores were obtained for the total speech sample and each sentence category. Data were statistically analyzed to investigate the effects of gender, sentence category, and gender by sentence category. Results Normative nasalance scores were obtained for the total speech sample (26%), high-pressure consonant sentences (14%), low-pressure consonant sentences (16%), and a nasal consonant sentence (51%). There was no significant difference in nasalance scores between male and female speakers. Significant differences were found between each sentence category (p ≤ .001), except between the high-pressure and low-pressure consonant sentence categories (p = .09). Conclusion The present study provides normative nasalance data for English-speaking Irish children. There was a significant difference between nasalance scores for different speech stimuli.