Nasalance scores for normal Irish Englishspeaking adults: A crossgender comparative study

1
Nasalance scores for normal Irish
English-speaking adults A cross-gender
comparative study
Alice Lee, Ph.D., Una Browne, B.Sc. Department of
Speech Hearing Sciences, University College
Cork, Ireland
November 21, 2008 ASHA Convention
Results The results are shown in Figure 2. In
addition, one-way between-groups MANCOVA showed
insignificant difference between men women in
terms of nasalance for each type of stimulus
(p0.0071). Figure 2. Nasalance
scores of 30 male and 30 female Irish English
speakers for the different types of speech
stimuli. Summary The present study
established normative nasalance scores for
different speech materials for Irish English (IE)
speakers from Southern Ireland. Men women did
not differ significantly in their nasalance.
Background The Nasometer (Kay Pentax, Lincoln
Park, NJ) is a non-invasive, computer-based
device that measures and calculates nasalance
score, which is a ratio of nasal to
nasal-plus-oral acoustic energy during speech.1
In principle, the higher the nasalance score, the
higher the degree of nasality in speech (see
figure 1). Figure 1. Nasalance contour
of two oral sentences (top) and two nasal
sentences (bottom). This measure has been
used clinically in research to assess resonance
disorders as a result of velopharyngeal
dysfunction due to various etiologies (e.g. cleft
palate). In assessment, the nasalance score
obtained from a patient is compared to a
published normative score, hence information on
nasalance norms is important.
It has been shown that nasalance may vary
with dialect, language (see table 1) and other
factors.2 This means establishing regional norms
is necessary. Moreover, previous findings
regarding the effect of gender on nasalance
scores are inconclusive.3 Therefore, this study
aimed to (1) establish nasalance norms for Irish
English (IE) speakers from Southern Ireland
(county Cork) (2) investigate whether there is
a significant difference between males females
in terms of nasalance scores. Table 1. Summary
of published normative nasalance data of some
languages and English dialects. Method
Procedures Speakers were 30 male (mean age
21 years) and 30 female (mean age 20 years)
native IE speakers from county Cork. All had
normal hearing ability and no history of speech,
language, voice, or hearing disorders
oro-craniofacial anomalies, according to
self-report. They were recruited in University
College Cork (UCC) via email. All speakers
read aloud (a) 16 sentences (including 5
high-pressure oral sentences, 2 low-pressure oral
sentences, 8 mixed sentences (with both nasal
oral consonants) 1 nasal sentence (with 55
nasal consonants),8 (b) The Zoo passage (an oral
passage) and (c) The Rainbow passage (a mixed
passage contains 11.5 nasal consonants). Speech
samples were recorded using the Nasometer II
Model 6400 (Kay Pentax, Lincoln Park, NJ) in a
quiet room (the Phonetics Lab) in UCC.
This supports the results of a couple of previous
studies,3 but disagrees with a recent study which
showed that Irish females had significantly
higher wider range of nasalance scores.10 This
means further research on regional norms for IE
may be needed. The results also supported
that nasalance varies with dialect language
IE speakers from Southern Ireland had lower
nasalance than the English speakers from North
America but higher nasalance than the speakers of
Brazilian Portuguese. Acknowledgement The
authors would like to thank the speakers for
their participation. This study was based on an
undergraduate honours dissertation conducted by
UB under the supervision of AL. References 1.
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