title: Nasometric sensitivity and specificity: a cross-dialect and cross-culture study.
abstract: A series of 514 patients seen at three clinics in the United States and Spain were evaluated using clinical judgments of hypernasality, and nasometric assessment of oral-nasal resonance balance. Data from the nasometer were obtained while patients read a passage devoid of nasal consonants. Across all subjects, the Pearson correlation coefficient between the clinical and instrumental measures was 0.78. Prediction analyses revealed that maximum efficiency was obtained using a somewhat different threshold nasalance value for each of the three patient samples. When all 514 subjects were investigated as a single group, a threshold nasalance score of 28 was found to optimize identification of patients with and without clinically significant hypernasality. In that analysis, a sensitivity of 0.87, a specificity of 0.86 and an overall efficiency of 0.87 was obtained. The clinical relevance of these findings is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27599-7450.
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Dalston
authors.forename: G S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Neiman
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gonzalez-Landa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008875:Middle Aged; D009657:North Carolina; D009820:Ohio; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013030:Spain; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D013065:Speech Intelligibility