Nasalance Scores of 5 to 7-Year-Old Korean Children

Lim, Sung Eun; Sim, Hyun Sub; Kim, Hyang Hee; Choi, Hong Shik

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2005;10(3): 71-88.

Sung Eun Lim^` , Hyun Sub Sim^` , Hyang Hee Kim^` , and Hong Shik Choi^`

임성은(Sung Eun Lim)| 심현섭(Hyun Sub Sim)| 김향희(Hyang Hee Kim)| 최홍식(Hong Shik Choi)

ABSTRACT

The objectives of this study were to obtain the preliminary norm of nasalance scores of Korean children during the production of nonsense syllables and sentences, and to determine whether age and gender differences exist in those stimuli. Sixty normal children(30 girls and 30 boys aged 5 to 7 years) repeated the examiner’s reading stimuli, which were nonsense syllables with lenis consonants and three sentence categories: those with high pressure consonants, low pressure consonants and nasal consonants. The data were collected and analyzed using the NasometerTM. Nasalance scores of each stimulus were obtained as follows: In the nonsense syllables, nasalance scores showed no significant differences for age and gender. Nasalance scores in the C + /i/ syllable forms were higher than those in the C + /a/ form. The highest nasalance score was found in the syllables with nasal consonants. In the sentence categories, nasalance scores showed no significant differences for age and gender. Nasalance scores of the total speech sample were 27.34 %, of the high pressure consonant sentences were 8.50 %, of the low pressure consonant sentences were 7.17 %, and of the nasal consonant sentences were 61.73 %. There were significant differences among the four sentence categories. These results are expected to provide the preliminary norms for cleft palate children with resonance disorders. Further studies are called upon for considering dialectic differences and including more extensive age groups as subjects.