Speech Development of Children With Cleft Palate Before and After Palatal Surgery

Abstract

Abstract Objective: This study examined the speech production abilities of children with cleft palate before and after palate repair. Participants: Twenty-eight children participated in the study, 14 with cleft palate and 14 without clefts matched for age, gender, and mothers' educational level. Main Outcome Measures: Comparisons were made between the children with cleft palate before and after surgery for canonical babbling ratios, size of consonant inventories, place and manner characteristics, and early developing sounds [p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, ]. Also, comparisons were made between the children with cleft palate and their peers without clefts at postsurgery/17 months for the measures described above. Results: Paired t tests revealed differences in pre- and postsurgery performance of the children with cleft palate for production of canonical syllables and size of consonant inventories. Although no significant differences were noted for place and manner features, production of oral stops doubled from t...