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Effect of stimulus length on nasalance scores
T Watterson1, K E Lewis, N Foley-Homan
1Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno 89557, USA. tw@med.unr.edu
Objective:
Nasalance measures were compared for speech stimuli of four different lengths.
Design:
The standard for comparison was a 44-syllable passage. The 44-syllable passage was compared to a 17-syllable passage, a 6-syllable sentence, and a 2-syllable word. All stimuli were devoid of nasal consonants and were composed only of low pressure consonants and vowels.
Setting:
Academic and clinical craniofacial center.
Subjects:
The subjects were 20 children at risk for velopharyngeal dysfunction and 5 children without history of communication disorder.
Main Outcome Measure(S):
The main outcome measures were the nasalance scores associated with speech samples of different lengths.
Results:
The results showed that comparable measures of nasalance can be obtained using stimuli as short as a six-syllable sentence. Both the 17-syllable and the 6-syllable stimulus achieved high criterion validity, indicating that stimuli of that length could be substituted for the longer 44-syllable passage. The two-syllable word, however, had significantly lower criterion validity and could not be used to obtain valid estimates of nasalance.
Conclusion:
Valid assessment of nasalance can be achieved with speech samples as short as six syllables.