Age and Phonetic Influences on Velar Flutter as a Component of Nasal Turbulence in Children With Repaired Cleft Palate.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of age and selected phonetic factors on velar flutter as a component of nasal turbulence in children with repaired cleft palate.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 30 children with repaired cleft palate with or without cleft lip ranging in age from 4 to 13 years (mean, 8.6 years; standard deviation, 2.4 years) who exhibited nasal turbulence characterized by velar flutter participated in the study.

MEASURES

The headset of a nasometer was used to record the children producing multiple repetitions of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables that contrasted the stops /p/ and /t/ with the fricatives /f/ and /s/ and the high-front vowel /i/ with the low mid-central vowel /Λ/. All targeted consonants were coded relative to the presence of flutter using both perceptual and spectral criteria. Percentages of syllables coded for flutter were calculated as a function of consonant and vowel types. Intra-and interjudge reliability of coding was high.

RESULTS

Percentages of syllables with velar flutter ranged from a high of 100% to a low of 4% among the participants. A Spearman rank-order correlation between age and percentage of syllables with flutter was nonsignificant. Mantel-Haenszel tests for repeated measures indicated that flutter occurred more often during production of syllables containing /i/ (62%) when compared with /Λ/ (50%) (P = .029).

CONCLUSIONS

Velar flutter as a component of nasal turbulence varies widely among children with repaired cleft palate. CV syllables with high vowels appear to trigger velar flutter more often than syllables with low vowels.