[Acoustic characterization of velar insufficiency in young children]

The following study concerns the acoustic parameters marking the difference between the phonation of children with velar incompetency and a corresponding control group. Population is made of 64 children aged 5 and 6; 32 are in the control group and 32 in the pathological group. Each child was required to repeat several words; 10 vowels and 9 consonants were taken from those words. Acoustic signal was recorded and studied using a standard speech assessment work station. 63 parameters for the vowels and 6 for the consonants were studied. Results showed that the best parameters concerned the vowels and that cepstrum coefficients were an efficient tool to perform the separation of the two groups. On the contrary, formants, voice pitch and jitter did not appear to be efficient enough to do this task. It was, then, deduced a check form for velopharyngeal incompetency, form which will be tested in future work.