Abstract
This study aimed to determine nasalance values for syllables produced by Brazilian Portuguese speakers of different ages and gender. Nasalance scores were collected for 14 syllables (10 orals and 4 nasals) using Nasometer II 6400. The participants were 245 Brazilian Portuguese speakers (121 males and 124 females), both genders, divided into four age groups: 57 children, 61 adolescents, 65 young adults and 62 adults. Nasalance scores for nasal syllables were higher than for oral syllables. For both, oral and nasal syllables, nasalance scores were higher for vowel /i/ than for /a/. Across all syllables, the females' nasalance scores were higher than males, with most of this difference attributed to the oldest age group where females mean nasalance was three points higher than males. Values obtained demonstrated nasalance scores variation according to gender, particularly for the adult group and for the syllables tested.
Highlights
The speech oronasal balance may be affected in clinical populations in risk for velopharyngeal dysfunction and/or in the population with reduced permeability of the upper airways
Some authors argue that the clinical evaluation can be corroborated with instrumental evaluation including nasometry[2], while others[3,4,5] emphasize the importance of using direct and indirect assessment of the velopharyngeal function combined with perceptual assessment of populations with velopharyngeal dysfunction or changes in nasal permeability
Nasalance measurements were obtained in various studies that aimed to document the oronasal balance presented by population with cleft lip and palate[7], neuromotor diseases[9] and hearing loss[10,11]
Summary
The speech oronasal balance may be affected in clinical populations in risk for velopharyngeal dysfunction (cleft lip and palate, neuromotor disorders, hearing impairment) and/or in the population with reduced permeability of the upper airways (nasal obstruction and/or nasopharyngeal). Normative nasalance values during repetition of syllables were obtained for speakers of American English[18] and Marathi[19], Turkish[20], Egyptian[21] and Ugandan English dialect[22], as well as for adults speakers of Greek[23] One of these studies, in particular, determined the nasalance values for Egyptian language speakers, and checked the effect of gender and age in these values[21]. Previous studies have established the first normative nasalance values for Brazilian Portuguese speakers, with different age groups, using oral texts[24] or single word (“papai”)(25). Both speech stimuli proposed in the Brazilian Portuguese language did not aim to control the effect of the vowels in nasalance values. The study aimed to characterize nasalance for these speech stimuli regarding the possible effects of age and sex
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