Perceptual evaluation of hypernasality compared to HONC measures: the role of experience.
OBJECTIVE
Nasality ratings from experienced and inexperienced listeners were compared to accelerometric measures using the Horii Oral Nasal Coupling (HONC) Index to determine if one group's ratings are more closely related to the HONC Index measures. The reliability of listener ratings was studied to determine if experienced listeners had better reliability than inexperienced listeners. The influence of phonetic content was analyzed to learn if ratings of sentences with stop consonants yielded higher correlations with HONC scores than sentences containing glides.


METHODS
Experienced and inexperienced listeners' ratings of hypernasality were correlated to the HONC measures for two nonnasal sentence productions. Analysis of variance compared experienced versus inexperienced listener ratings.


METHODS
Ten listeners who were speech-language pathologists with at least 10 years of experience in assessing hypernasality and 10 listeners who were graduate students in communicative disorders with less than 1 year of experience. Speech samples were acquired from 13 children with varying degrees of hypernasality and 5 children with normal nasality.


RESULTS
Correlations between ratings of hypernasality and HONC scores were .60 for the experienced group and .52 for the inexperienced group. In general, the experienced listeners rated the hypernasality of the speakers as less severe. Both groups had similar intrajudge reliability. Hypernasality ratings were not influenced by sentence context.


CONCLUSIONS
Hypernasality can be rated in a reliable fashion regardless of listener experience. The correlations between the objective measure of nasalization (HONC) and the perceptual ratings were not as high as expected. Factors contributing to obtaining only moderate correlations will be discussed.
Laczi
Elizabeth
E
University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14214, USA.
Sussman
Joan E
JE
Stathopoulos
Elaine T
ET
Huber
Jessica
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002972:Cleft Palate / Q000150:complications; D002983:Clinical Competence; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D012015:Reference Standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000592:standards*; D014681:Velopharyngeal Insufficiency / Q000150:complications; D014732:Vibration; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology