• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.105-119
• /
• 1999

Cleft palate patients have general speech problems with resonance disorders and articulation disorders. The aim of this study is to find the aerodynamic and acoustic characteristics of the nasalization in cleft palate speakers. Thirteen control groups and three cleft palate patients pre- and post operation were selected for these studies. The test words are composed by polysyllabic words: consonants between high vowel /i/ analysis. The cleft palate patients repeated test words pre- and post-operation from one, three and six month periods. The subjects repeated test words on Macquirer and on Nasometer Model 6200-3. The aerodynamic and acoustic results of nasalization show as follows: (1) The nasal rate in overall airflow of aspirated consonant for cleft palate patients shows higher levels than that of the control group. It had decreased since one month after operation. (2) The overall airflow of cleft palate patients is higher than in the control group, however oral air pressure is lower than control group. (3) The nasal airflow and the nasal rate in overall airflow of cleft palate patients has higher than the control group, however its decreased after operation. (4) The nasalance scores of cleft palate patients were 40% higher than that of the control group. The scores did not decrease after operation. The nasalance score of lateral and fricative sounds did not decrease after operation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.171-177
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether CPAP therapy was effective for reducing the degree of hypernasality in individuals with repaired cleft palate and whether the efficacy of CPAP therapy was maintained. Five individuals with cleft palate participated in an 8-week home-based CPAP program. Results from perceptual evaluation of hypernasality and nasalance scores before and after CPAP therapy and at the follow-up speech evaluation were compared. The results of the study showed that the responses of the CPAP therapy were various among individuals. Three individuals exhibited reductions in the degree of perceived hypernasality, while nasalance scores in all individuals decreased after the therapy. The results showed that the effect of CPAP therapy was generally maintained until approximately three months after the completion of CPAP therapy.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• /
• v.39
• /
• pp.9.1-9.5
• /
• 2017

Background: Nasalance is used to evaluate the velopharyngeal incompetence in clinical diagnoses using a nasometer. The aim of this study is to find the nasalance differences between Vietnamese cleft palate children and Korean cleft palate children by measuring the nasalance of five oral vowels. Methods: Ten Vietnamese cleft palate children after surgery, three Vietnamese children for the control group, and ten Korean cleft palate children after surgery with the same age participated in this experimentation. Instead of Korean control, the standard value of Korean version of the simplified nasometric assessment procedures (kSNAP) was used. Result: The results are as follows: (1) the highest nasalance score among the Vietnamese normal vowels is the low vowel /a/; however, that of Korean normal vowels is the high vowel /i/. (2) The average nasalance score of Korean cleft palate vowels is 18% higher than that of Vietnamese cleft palate vowels. There was a nasalance score of over 45% among the vowels /e/ and /i/ in Vietnamese cleft palate patients and /i/, /o/, and /u/ in Korean cleft palate patients. Conclusion: These different nasalance scores of the same vowels seem to cause an ethnic difference between Vietnamese and Korean cleft palate children.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.124-131
• /
• 2002

Speech characteristics of patients with cleft palates are resonance disorders, articulatory disorders and voice disorders. The purpose of this study is to find the acoustic, physiological and articulatory characteristics of cleft palate speakers. Thirteen control groups and 3 cleft palate patients participated in this experiment. Test words were composed of simple vowels and consonants imbedded in low vowel /a/, /p 'ap'i/ and /sasi/ according to the evaluation experiments. CSL, Video fluoroscopy, Fiberscope and Nasometer were used to analyze VOT, vowel formants, profiles of articulator, VP port images and nasalance. The results are as follows : (1) The nasalance of cleft palate patients in the high vowel /i/, stop sounds and fricative sounds were 60%, 34.8% and 44.1%, respectively. These values were higher than those of the control group. (2) Posterior articulatory movements /k'a/ in patients with cleft palates showed backward movement in comparison with the control group on Video Fluoroscopic images and palatograms. These results suggested that patients with cleft palate have the compensatory oral sounds to close the VP port. (3) The VOT in patients with cleft palates was longer than that of the control group.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.79-86
• /
• 2012

In the two-band excitation (TBE) model, maximum voiced frequency (MVF) is the most important feature of the excitation parameter because the synthetic speech quality depends on MVF. Thus, this paper proposes an enhanced MVF estimation scheme based on the peak picking method. In the proposed scheme, the local peak and the peak lobe are picked from the spectrum of a linear predictive residual signal. The normalized distance between neighboring peak lobes is calculated and utilized as a feature to estimate MVF. Experimental results of both objective and subjective tests show that the proposed scheme improves synthetic speech quality compared with that of the conventional one.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.50-57
• /
• 1999

A study to get the data of normal stop consonants production as preliminary study for cleft palate patients was performed. Normal Korean native 21 speakers were pronounced $VCV(V=/a/,C=/P/,/{P^1}/,/P^h/,/t/,/{t^1}/,/{t^h}/,/k/,/{k^1}/,/{k^h}/)$ syllables with natural speech rate and intensity. With intrapharyngeal pressure waveforms by pressure sensor in oropharyngeal cavity, amplitude and time duration of intrapharyngeal pressure were analyzed, and with acoustic waveforms and spectrograms, closure duration and VOT were analyzed. As results, the highest amplitude of intrapharyngeal pressure showed in alveolars and heavily aspirated consonants. Velars and unaspirated consonants were higher than bilabials and slightly aspirated ones each, in intrapharyngeal pressure. Bilabilas, alveolars and velars showed similar rise time of intrapharyngeal pressure build-up, but in decay time and total duration time, bilabials were slightly shorter than alveolars and velars, with no statistic significance. In the aspects of tensity, unaspirated consonants showed the longest rise time, heavily aspirated, the second, and slightly aspirated consonants, the shortest, which were also seen in decay time and total duration time. In closure duration, slightly aspirated consonants had the shortest closure duration, and the heavily aspirated ones, the second, and unaspirated consonants showed the longest. In VOT, heavily aspirated consonants showed the longest, slightly aspirated ones, the second and unaspirated ones showed the shortest.