No description available.

Thirty-eight clinicians were surveyed regarding their current clinical practices in assessing, tracking treatment and determining discharge criteria for clients with resonance disorders. When these results were compared with recommendations from the literature for best practices, it was found that: (a) most clinicians were using low-tech assessment tools (such as perceptual assessment) at least some of the time, (b) many clinicians were not using high-tech assessment tools (such as videofluoroscopy) simply because they lacked access to such tools, and (c) clinicians are remarkably similar in their clinical practices across a wide variety of circumstances (such as age, and employment setting). The primary recommendation accruing from these findings was that more high-tech assessment tools should be routinely available to clinicians practicing in this area. More consistent use of sophisticated assessment devices would exemplify contemporary thinking about transfer of knowledge to practice in the area of resonance disorders assessment and improve patient outcomes.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine whether a novel, user-friendly rating system, visual sort and rate (VSR) provides comparable ratings to the currently used direct magnitude estimation (DME) rating system for rating perceptions of audible nasal emission (ANE) and hypernasality in cleft palate speakers. Methods: Twelve naïve listeners rated 152 speech samples of speakers with cleft palate across four conditions: rating hypernasality and ANE using either a VSR or DME rating scale. Raters were provided with a short training session, prior to rating each day. Inter- and intra-rater reliabilities, as well the line of best fit between scores using VSR and scores using DME was calculated to determine usability of VSR as a novel rating system. Results: Direct magnitude estimation resulted in the highest levels of inter-rater reliability, when rating hypernasality (DME r= .48; VSR r=.14), as well as ANE (DME r= .27; VSR r=.15). Most raters demonstrated high intra-rater reliabilities across conditions. A curvilinear line of best fit most accurately captured the relationship between DME and VSR scores when rating hypernasality (r=.64) and ANE (r=.66). Conclusions: A curvilinear relationship between ratings suggests that both variables are prothetic, and therefore, best captured using a DME rating scale (Eadie & Doyle, 2002). The use of DME is supported for continued use rating hypernasality, even amongst naïve listeners given a training session. Rating ANE was difficult, as ratings yielded low inter-rater reliabilities, regardless of the scale used. Further research regarding perceptions of audible nasal emission is warranted.

No description available.

Objetivo: O objetivo deste estudo foi comparar nasalidade de fala em crianças com sequência de Robin isolada, operadas pela técnica de palatoplastia de Furlow, com a fala de crianças operadas pela técnica de von Langenbeck. Modelo: Estudo prospectivo. Local de execução: Setor de Fonoaudiologia e Laboratório de Fonética do Hospital de Reabilitação de Anomalias Craniofaciais da Universidade de São Paulo (HRACUSP). Método: Análise da nasalidade da fala realizada em 69 crianças com sequência de Robin isolada, comparando-se os resultados das 33 que receberam palatoplastia primária pela técnica de Furlow (F) com as 36 que receberam von Langenbeck (VL). A avaliação perceptivo-auditiva da nasalidade da fala envolveu: 1) o uso de escala de 4 pontos (hipernasalidade ausente, leve, moderada e grave), 2) o uso de teste cul-de-sac em vocábulos, e 3) a análise de gravações da frase o bebê babou por 3 ouvintes experientes, com estabelecimento da concordância intra e inter-juízes. A avaliação instrumental da nasalidade foi feita com a Nasometria durante repetição da frase o bebê babou, utilizando-se o valor de corte de 27% para interpretação da presença/ausência da hipernasalidade. Estudou-se a significância das diferenças entre as medidas obtidas nos grupos F e VL, analisando-se também a associação da nasalidade com gênero, idade na palatoplastia, idade na avaliação, extensão da fissura, realização da fonoterapia e ronco nasal. Concordância entre as 4 modalidades de avaliação foi obtida e as análises foram repetidas para o grupo de 47 participantes sem ronco nasal. Resultados: Crianças que receberam F apresentaram melhores resultados de nasalidade de fala para todas as modalidades de avaliação estudadas. Ausência de hipernasalidade, observada em escala de 4 pontos aplicada ao vivo pela autora, foi encontrada para 26 (78,8%) das crianças operadas pela técnica de F e 17 (47,2%) das que receberam VL. A diferença entre os dois grupos foi considerada significante (p=0,012). Quando apenas os participantes sem ronco nasal foram estudados (N=47), ausência de hipernasalidade foi encontrada para 22 (91,7%) das crianças operadas pela técnica de F e 13 (56,5%) das que receberam VL, sendo esta diferença também significante (p=0,008). Concordância entre as modalidades de avaliação, analisada pela estatística Kappa, variou entre razoável (0,32) a quase perfeita (0,87) para o grupo de 69 participantes e entre razoável (0,32) a perfeita (1,00) para o grupo sem ronco nasal. Foi encontrada associação significante somente entre nasalidade e ronco nasal. Conclusão: Os pacientes com sequência de Robin, submetidos à palatoplastia primária pela técnica de Furlow, apresentaram melhores resultados de nasalidade de fala tanto durante avaliação perceptivo-auditiva quanto durante avaliação instrumental, quando comparados aos pacientes operados pela técnica de von Langenbeck. / Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare speech nasality in children with isolated Robin sequence, operated with the Furlow palatoplasty technique, to the speech of children operated with the von Langenbeck technique. Research design: Prospective study. Research site: Department of Speech-Pathology and Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics at the University of São Paulo Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies (HRAC-USP). Methods: Speech nasality was analyzed for 69 children with isolated Robin sequence, comparing the results for the 33 children who received primary palatoplasty with the Furlow procedure to the results of children who received the von Langenbeck (VL). Auditory-perceptual assessment of speech nasality involved: 1) the use of a 4-point scale (absence, mild, moderate and severe hypernasality), 2) the use of a cul-de-sac test in words, and 3) experienced listeners ratings of recordings of the phrase o bebê babou, establishing intra and inter-judge reliability. The instrumental assessment of nasality was done with Nasometry during repetition of the phrase o bebê babou, using the CUT-off score of 27% to interpret presence/absence of hypernasality. The significance of the differences between F and VL groups was studied, also analyzing the association of nasality with gender, age at palatoplasty, age at speech assessment, cleft severity, speech therapy and nasal snort. Agreement between the 4 modalities of assessment was studied and the analysis were repeated for the group of 47 participants without nasal snort . Results: Children Who received F presented with better speech nasality for all modalities of assessment studied. Absence of hypernasality, evaluated with 4-point scale live by the author, was found 26 (78,8%) children who received F e 17 (47,2%) who received VL. The difference between both groups was significant (p=0,012). When only the participants without nasal snort were studied (N=47), absence of hypernasality, was found 22 (91,7%) children who received F e 13 (56,5%) who received VL, with a difference also significant (p=0,008). Agreement between all 4 modalities of assessment as measured by Kappa statistics, was found between acceptable (0,32) to almost perfect (0,87) for the group of 69 participants, and between acceptable (0,32) and perfect (1,00) for the group without nasal snort. Significant association was found between nasality and nasal snort. Conclusion: Patients with Robin sequence who received primary palatoplasty with the F procedure presented with better speech nasality during auditory-perceptual and instrumental evaluations when compared with patients who received the VL procedure.

A hipernasalidade é uma alteração da ressonância de fala que surge quando há um acoplamento indesejável entre as cavidades oral e nasal durante a fala, geralmente, decorrente de uma disfunção do mecanismo velofaríngeo. A relação entre tamanho da abertura velofaríngea e a hipernasalidade de fala ainda não é um fenômeno bem compreendido. Em particular, pouco se sabe sobre o perfil acústico das vogais em diferentes condições de abertura velofaríngea. O objetivo deste estudo é descrever o perfil espectrográfico e nasométrico da vogal [a] e sua contraparte nasal [ã] durante a produção de fala em condições de abertura velofaríngea diferentes, porém de tamanho controlado. Este estudo foi conduzido por meio da análise acústica e perceptivo-auditiva da fala de um único sujeito com fissura pós-forame incompleta, usuário de uma prótese de palato obturadora, onde o controle do tamanho da abertura velofaríngea foi feito por meio de orifícios de 10 \'MM POT.2\', 20 \'MM POT.2\' e 30 \'MM POT.2\', criados experimentalmente no bulbo de réplicas da prótese deste sujeito. Dois pares mínimos de vogal oral versus vogal nasal inseridos em frase-veículo foram usados como corpus para coleta das amostras de fala, totalizando um número de 136 amostras analisadas neste estudo. O controle do tamanho da abertura velofaríngea (tamanho do gap) mostrou-se uma variável importante na definição do perfil acústico da fala hipernasal, embora não tenha havido linearidade entre os tamanhos de abertura velofaríngea e o grau de nasalância, nem com valores formânticos ou de duração. / Hypernasality is a resonance disorder due to the coupling between the oral and nasal cavities, usually associated to velopharyngeal dysfunction. The relationship between size of velopharyngeal opening and speech hypernasality is not a well understood phenomenon. Particularly, little is known between the acoustic profiles of vowels under differents conditions of velopharyngeal opening. The objective of this study is to describe the acoustic profile of the vowel [a] and its counterpart [ã], during speech production under different, but controlled, sizes of velopharyngeal opening. This study involved the acoustic and auditory-perceptual analysis of the speech of a single subject with incomplete operated cleft palate and a remaining velopharyngeal insufficiency treated with a speech bulb. The subjects speech appliance was duplicated allowing for the introduction of openings of controlled sizes in the bulb (10 \'MM POT.2\', 20 \'MM POT.2\' e 30 \'MM POT.2\'). Two minimal-pair words with the vowel [a] and two with the vowel [ã] produced within a phrase were used as speech corpus leading to a total of 136 speech samples analyzed in this study. Controlling size of velopharyngeal opening was important in the definition of the acoustic profile og hypernasal speech, however, the results of this study did not indicate a linear relation between size of velopharyngeal opening and nasalance scores not with formant or duration measures.

Objetivo: O objetivo deste estudo foi comparar nasalidade de fala em crianças com sequência de Robin isolada, operadas pela técnica de palatoplastia de Furlow, com a fala de crianças operadas pela técnica de von Langenbeck. Modelo: Estudo prospectivo. Local de execução: Setor de Fonoaudiologia e Laboratório de Fonética do Hospital de Reabilitação de Anomalias Craniofaciais da Universidade de São Paulo (HRACUSP). Método: Análise da nasalidade da fala realizada em 69 crianças com sequência de Robin isolada, comparando-se os resultados das 33 que receberam palatoplastia primária pela técnica de Furlow (F) com as 36 que receberam von Langenbeck (VL). A avaliação perceptivo-auditiva da nasalidade da fala envolveu: 1) o uso de escala de 4 pontos (hipernasalidade ausente, leve, moderada e grave), 2) o uso de teste cul-de-sac em vocábulos, e 3) a análise de gravações da frase o bebê babou por 3 ouvintes experientes, com estabelecimento da concordância intra e inter-juízes. A avaliação instrumental da nasalidade foi feita com a Nasometria durante repetição da frase o bebê babou, utilizando-se o valor de corte de 27% para interpretação da presença/ausência da hipernasalidade. Estudou-se a significância das diferenças entre as medidas obtidas nos grupos F e VL, analisando-se também a associação da nasalidade com gênero, idade na palatoplastia, idade na avaliação, extensão da fissura, realização da fonoterapia e ronco nasal. Concordância entre as 4 modalidades de avaliação foi obtida e as análises foram repetidas para o grupo de 47 participantes sem ronco nasal. Resultados: Crianças que receberam F apresentaram melhores resultados de nasalidade de fala para todas as modalidades de avaliação estudadas. Ausência de hipernasalidade, observada em escala de 4 pontos aplicada ao vivo pela autora, foi encontrada para 26 (78,8%) das crianças operadas pela técnica de F e 17 (47,2%) das que receberam VL. A diferença entre os dois grupos foi considerada significante (p=0,012). Quando apenas os participantes sem ronco nasal foram estudados (N=47), ausência de hipernasalidade foi encontrada para 22 (91,7%) das crianças operadas pela técnica de F e 13 (56,5%) das que receberam VL, sendo esta diferença também significante (p=0,008). Concordância entre as modalidades de avaliação, analisada pela estatística Kappa, variou entre razoável (0,32) a quase perfeita (0,87) para o grupo de 69 participantes e entre razoável (0,32) a perfeita (1,00) para o grupo sem ronco nasal. Foi encontrada associação significante somente entre nasalidade e ronco nasal. Conclusão: Os pacientes com sequência de Robin, submetidos à palatoplastia primária pela técnica de Furlow, apresentaram melhores resultados de nasalidade de fala tanto durante avaliação perceptivo-auditiva quanto durante avaliação instrumental, quando comparados aos pacientes operados pela técnica de von Langenbeck. / Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare speech nasality in children with isolated Robin sequence, operated with the Furlow palatoplasty technique, to the speech of children operated with the von Langenbeck technique. Research design: Prospective study. Research site: Department of Speech-Pathology and Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics at the University of São Paulo Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies (HRAC-USP). Methods: Speech nasality was analyzed for 69 children with isolated Robin sequence, comparing the results for the 33 children who received primary palatoplasty with the Furlow procedure to the results of children who received the von Langenbeck (VL). Auditory-perceptual assessment of speech nasality involved: 1) the use of a 4-point scale (absence, mild, moderate and severe hypernasality), 2) the use of a cul-de-sac test in words, and 3) experienced listeners ratings of recordings of the phrase o bebê babou, establishing intra and inter-judge reliability. The instrumental assessment of nasality was done with Nasometry during repetition of the phrase o bebê babou, using the CUT-off score of 27% to interpret presence/absence of hypernasality. The significance of the differences between F and VL groups was studied, also analyzing the association of nasality with gender, age at palatoplasty, age at speech assessment, cleft severity, speech therapy and nasal snort. Agreement between the 4 modalities of assessment was studied and the analysis were repeated for the group of 47 participants without nasal snort . Results: Children Who received F presented with better speech nasality for all modalities of assessment studied. Absence of hypernasality, evaluated with 4-point scale live by the author, was found 26 (78,8%) children who received F e 17 (47,2%) who received VL. The difference between both groups was significant (p=0,012). When only the participants without nasal snort were studied (N=47), absence of hypernasality, was found 22 (91,7%) children who received F e 13 (56,5%) who received VL, with a difference also significant (p=0,008). Agreement between all 4 modalities of assessment as measured by Kappa statistics, was found between acceptable (0,32) to almost perfect (0,87) for the group of 69 participants, and between acceptable (0,32) and perfect (1,00) for the group without nasal snort. Significant association was found between nasality and nasal snort. Conclusion: Patients with Robin sequence who received primary palatoplasty with the F procedure presented with better speech nasality during auditory-perceptual and instrumental evaluations when compared with patients who received the VL procedure.

Excessive nasal resonance in speech (hypernasality) is a disorder which may have negative communicative and social consequences for the speaker. Excessive nasal resonance is often associated with cleft lip and palate, velopharyngeal impairment, dysarthria or hearing impairment. Evaluation of hypernasality has proved to be a challenge in the clinic and in research. There are questions regarding the accuracy and reliability of auditory perceptual evaluations of nasal speech, and whether instrumental measures can be used to improve the reliability of clinical evaluation. There is also the question of whether clinical evaluation reflects the impact of hypernasality in a speaker’s everyday life. The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate the extent of reliability problems connected with auditory perceptual assessment of nasality in speech, to explore whether they might interfere with treatment decisions or have an impact in the everyday life of patients, and whether they can be effectively diminished by the use of nasometry. Speakers with cleft lip and palate or velopharyngeal impairment formed the basis of the clinical population used in this study. Speech samples from 52 of these speakers, along with samples from a reference population of 21 speakers who did not have cleft palate, velopharyngeal impairment or speech disorders were used in perceptual evaluation tasks. Fourteen speakers from the clinical population and 11 from the reference population also underwent nasometric evaluation. A further reference population of 220 children from three Swedish cities, whose ages were consistent with those used for clinical checks of children born with cleft palate were assessed with nasometry to establish normative data for the Nasometer™. Perceptual speech assessments were conducted on hyper- and hyponasality, as well as audible nasal air emission and/or nasal turbulence, using 5-point ordinal scales. Listeners were SLPs experienced in the evaluation of cleft palate speech, non-expert SLPs and untrained listeners. Listening assessments were performed from audio recorded speech samples assembled in random order. Nasometry measures were made on three speech passages each with specific phonetic content, using the Nasometer™, model II. Perceptual evaluation Results showed that for hypernasality assessment, 15% of hypernasality assessments had disagreements between expert SLPs that were potentially important for clinical decisions, as did 6% of assessments for audible nasal air emission and/or nasal turbulence. For nasality problems, a comparison of expert and untrained listeners showed that they generally agreed on which speakers were hypernasal and on the ranking of nasal speakers. All speakers that had been rated with moderate to severe hypernasality by expert listeners were considered by the untrained listeners as having a serious enough speech disorder to call for intervention. However, in the case of audible nasal air emission and/or nasal turbulence the expert listeners were more prone to notice this feature than the untrained listeners. Instrumental evaluation The development of normative values for the three Swedish passages for the NasometerTM (comparable to normative values in other languages) has provided a basis for use of instrumental measures in Swedish clinics, oral sentences mixed sentences nasal sentences. The measures showed no significant differences due to city, gender or age within an age range of 4-10 years. When nasometry measures were compared with perceptual evaluation of speech samples from the same speakers, all correlations were moderate to good for expert SLPs and non-expert SLPs. The difference between correlations was significantly higher for expert SLPs than for untrained listeners. Reliability figures for perceptual assessments for expert SLP listeners indicated that there were some cases where lack of reliability could affect clinical decision making. However, in the main, judgements of nasality problems made by clinicians had everyday validity. They reflected the impressions of the everyday listener, especially in regard to the need for intervention. The study also indicates that now that Swedish norms are available, the Nasometer™ might be useful as a complement to auditory perceptual clinical speech assessments in Swedish cleft palate clinics in order to improve reliability of clinical assessment.

A hipernasalidade é uma alteração da ressonância de fala que surge quando há um acoplamento indesejável entre as cavidades oral e nasal durante a fala, geralmente, decorrente de uma disfunção do mecanismo velofaríngeo. A relação entre tamanho da abertura velofaríngea e a hipernasalidade de fala ainda não é um fenômeno bem compreendido. Em particular, pouco se sabe sobre o perfil acústico das vogais em diferentes condições de abertura velofaríngea. O objetivo deste estudo é descrever o perfil espectrográfico e nasométrico da vogal [a] e sua contraparte nasal [ã] durante a produção de fala em condições de abertura velofaríngea diferentes, porém de tamanho controlado. Este estudo foi conduzido por meio da análise acústica e perceptivo-auditiva da fala de um único sujeito com fissura pós-forame incompleta, usuário de uma prótese de palato obturadora, onde o controle do tamanho da abertura velofaríngea foi feito por meio de orifícios de 10 \'MM POT.2\', 20 \'MM POT.2\' e 30 \'MM POT.2\', criados experimentalmente no bulbo de réplicas da prótese deste sujeito. Dois pares mínimos de vogal oral versus vogal nasal inseridos em frase-veículo foram usados como corpus para coleta das amostras de fala, totalizando um número de 136 amostras analisadas neste estudo. O controle do tamanho da abertura velofaríngea (tamanho do gap) mostrou-se uma variável importante na definição do perfil acústico da fala hipernasal, embora não tenha havido linearidade entre os tamanhos de abertura velofaríngea e o grau de nasalância, nem com valores formânticos ou de duração. / Hypernasality is a resonance disorder due to the coupling between the oral and nasal cavities, usually associated to velopharyngeal dysfunction. The relationship between size of velopharyngeal opening and speech hypernasality is not a well understood phenomenon. Particularly, little is known between the acoustic profiles of vowels under differents conditions of velopharyngeal opening. The objective of this study is to describe the acoustic profile of the vowel [a] and its counterpart [ã], during speech production under different, but controlled, sizes of velopharyngeal opening. This study involved the acoustic and auditory-perceptual analysis of the speech of a single subject with incomplete operated cleft palate and a remaining velopharyngeal insufficiency treated with a speech bulb. The subjects speech appliance was duplicated allowing for the introduction of openings of controlled sizes in the bulb (10 \'MM POT.2\', 20 \'MM POT.2\' e 30 \'MM POT.2\'). Two minimal-pair words with the vowel [a] and two with the vowel [ã] produced within a phrase were used as speech corpus leading to a total of 136 speech samples analyzed in this study. Controlling size of velopharyngeal opening was important in the definition of the acoustic profile og hypernasal speech, however, the results of this study did not indicate a linear relation between size of velopharyngeal opening and nasalance scores not with formant or duration measures.

abstract: Speech is known to serve as an early indicator of neurological decline, particularly in motor diseases. There is significant interest in developing automated, objective signal analytics that detect clinically-relevant changes and in evaluating these algorithms against the existing gold-standard: perceptual evaluation by trained speech and language pathologists. Hypernasality, the result of poor control of the velopharyngeal flap---the soft palate regulating airflow between the oral and nasal cavities---is one such speech symptom of interest, as precise velopharyngeal control is difficult to achieve under neuromuscular disorders. However, a host of co-modulating variables give hypernasal speech a complex and highly variable acoustic signature, making it difficult for skilled clinicians to assess and for automated systems to evaluate. Previous work in rating hypernasality from speech relies on either engineered features based on statistical signal processing or machine learning models trained end-to-end on clinical ratings of disordered speech examples. Engineered features often fail to capture the complex acoustic patterns associated with hypernasality, while end-to-end methods tend to overfit to the small datasets on which they are trained. In this thesis, I present a set of acoustic features, models, and strategies for characterizing hypernasality in dysarthric speech that split the difference between these two approaches, with the aim of capturing the complex perceptual character of hypernasality without overfitting to the small datasets available. The features are based on acoustic models trained on a large corpus of healthy speech, integrating expert knowledge to capture known perceptual characteristics of hypernasal speech. They are then used in relatively simple linear models to predict clinician hypernasality scores. These simple models are robust, generalizing across diseases and outperforming comprehensive set of baselines in accuracy and correlation. This novel approach represents a new state-of-the-art in objective hypernasality assessment. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2020