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Nasalance distance and ratio: two new measures
T Bressmann1, R Sader, T L Whitehill
1Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University of Technology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Munich, Germany. tbressma@mkg.med.tu-muenchen.de
Summary
New nasalance distance and ratio measures improve speech analysis for hypernasality. These simple calculations supplement mean nasalance values in clinical settings.
Area of Science:
- Speech-language pathology
- Acoustic analysis
- Craniofacial anomalies
Background:
- Mean nasalance scores can vary significantly even in speakers with normal nasal resonance.
- Categorizing speech based on nasalance alone may not align with perceptual judgments of resonance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate two novel, simple measures: nasalance distance and nasalance ratio.
- To assess their utility in differentiating degrees of nasal resonance in speech.
Main Methods:
- Acoustic measurements of oral and nasal speech were obtained using the NasalView system.
- Nasalance distance (max-min) and nasalance ratio (min/max) were calculated from recorded sentences.
- The study included 133 patients with cleft lip and palate, exhibiting normal to hypernasal resonance.
Main Results:
- The new measures demonstrated good diagnostic accuracy, with sensitivity ranging from 64.4% to 89.6% and specificity from 91.2% to 94.1% across sentence sets.
- Analysis using a single non-nasal and single nasal sentence yielded high sensitivity (79.7%-87.5%) and specificity (88.2%-97.1%).
Conclusions:
- Nasalance distance and nasalance ratio are valuable additions to routine clinical speech examinations.
- These easily applicable measures effectively supplement traditional mean nasalance values for assessing nasal resonance.
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