Agreement Between Hypernasality Ratings and Nasalance Scores in Spanish-English Bilingual Patients with Cleft Palate

ObjectiveTo compare cross-linguistic auditory-perceptual nasality ratings and language-specific nasalance scores in Spanish-English bilingual children and adolescents with cleft palate.DesignRetrospective case series.SettingAcademic, tertiary pediatric hospital.ParticipantsSpanish- and English-speaking patients with cleft palate who underwent a bilingual resonance and articulation evaluation.Interventions/ComparisonsAuditory-perceptual nasality ratings versus nasalance scores.Main Outcome MeasuresCross-linguistic ratings of hypernasality, hyponasality, and audible nasal emission; mean and maximum nasalance scores for oral- and nasal-loaded stimuli in each language.ResultsEleven patients' data were analyzed (six females and five males; mean age, 11.3 years). Oral-loaded mean nasalance strongly reflected perceptual hypernasality in both languages; hyponasality ratings showed no relationship to mean nasalance with nasal-loaded stimuli in either language; and audible nasal emissions were associated with maximum nasalance in Spanish but not English. Repeated-measures analyses revealed no significant effect of phoneme context, language, or their interaction on either mean or maximum nasalance.ConclusionsOral-loaded mean nasalance measures strongly reflect perceptual hypernasality in both languages. Audible nasal emissions are significantly associated with maximum nasalance scores in Spanish only, suggesting possible language-specific perceptual and acoustic patterns. Further research is needed to determine if these conclusions hold in a larger, prospective cohort.