A longitudinal group study of speech development in Danish children born with and without cleft lip and palate

The present study focuses on contoid vocalization by Danish 1-year-old unrepaired toddlers born with cleft lip and palate, and how they differ from their non-cleft peers. Furthermore, we focus on how the same children master Danish consonants at 3 years of age compared with their non-cleft peers in terms of their ability to produce consonants in accordance with adult target. Also, with the 3 year olds, we look at cleft speech characteristics as well as developmental speech characteristics found in both groups of children. Based on phonetic transcription, it was found that Danish unoperated cleft palate children at 1 year of age produced few types of contoids and preferably contoids that did not require closure of the velopharyngeal port in their prespeech. In addition, the data suggest that consonants produced by cleft children who are treated with one-stage surgery after speech onset, at 3 years of age differ from speech produced by non-cleft children, not only as regards cleft speech characteristics, but also as regards developmental speech characteristics.