The impact of early palatal obturation on consonant development in babies with unrepaired cleft palate.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether palatal obturators enhance consonant development during babbling for babies with unrepaired cleft palate.


METHODS
Fourteen babies with cleft palate who had worn anterior palatal obturators prior to palatal surgery were matched to 14 unobturated babies according to cleft type, sex, and age at time of presurgical evaluation.


METHODS
Spontaneous vocalizations of the obturated and unobturated groups were compared to determine whether differences were evident in size of consonant inventory as well as place and manner of consonant production.


RESULTS
Paired t tests revealed no significant differences between the groups in size of consonant inventory or place and manner of consonant production. There was a trend for babies in the obturated group to produce more glottal consonants.


CONCLUSIONS
In general, the findings of this study suggested that palatal obturators do not appear to facilitate production of anterior palatal consonants during babbling.
Hardin-Jones
Mary A
MA
Division of Communication Disorders, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA. mhardinj@uwyo.edu.
Chapman
Kathy L
KL
Wright
Jane
J
Halter
Kelli Ann
KA
Schulte
Julie
J
Dean
Jeffrey A
JA
Havlik
Robert J
RJ
Goldstein
Jeffrey
J
D000158:Acoustic Impedance Tests; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002663:Child Language; D002972:Cleft Palate / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D016555:Matched-Pair Analysis; D010158:Palatal Obturators; D010700:Phonetics; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013637:Tape Recording