A study of relationships between judgments of speech and appearance of patients with orofacial clefts.

A series of six studies was designed to examine the effects of subjects' appearance on listeners' judgments of nasal speech and to examine the effects of nasal speech on viewers' judgments of attractiveness. In three studies, pictures of male and female subjects with varying degrees of orofacial clefts were paired with tape-recorded speech samples with varying degrees of nasality, and judges rated speech acceptability. Results of two-way analysis of variance failed to support the idea that appearance has an effect on ratings of nasality. In three other studies, the same stimuli were used to examine the effects of nasal speech on judges' ratings of appearance. Results of a two-way analysis of variance indicated that nasality had an effect on ratings of appearance. As the severity of nasality increased, ratings of attractiveness decreased. Results imply that a decrease in nasality may enhance the way persons with cleft lips are perceived cosmetically.