title: Age and Phonetic Influences on Velar Flutter as a Component of Nasal Turbulence in Children With Repaired Cleft Palate.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of age and selected phonetic factors on velar flutter as a component of nasal turbulence in children with repaired cleft palate.
  
  
  
  A total of 30 children with repaired cleft palate with or without cleft lip ranging in age from 4 to 13 years (mean, 8.6 years; standard deviation, 2.4 years) who exhibited nasal turbulence characterized by velar flutter participated in the study.
  
  
  
  The headset of a nasometer was used to record the children producing multiple repetitions of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables that contrasted the stops /p/ and /t/ with the fricatives /f/ and /s/ and the high-front vowel /i/ with the low mid-central vowel /Λ/. All targeted consonants were coded relative to the presence of flutter using both perceptual and spectral criteria. Percentages of syllables coded for flutter were calculated as a function of consonant and vowel types. Intra-and interjudge reliability of coding was high.
  
  
  
  Percentages of syllables with velar flutter ranged from a high of 100% to a low of 4% among the participants. A Spearman rank-order correlation between age and percentage of syllables with flutter was nonsignificant. Mantel-Haenszel tests for repeated measures indicated that flutter occurred more often during production of syllables containing /i/ (62%) when compared with /Λ/ (50%) (P = .029).
  
  
  
  Velar flutter as a component of nasal turbulence varies widely among children with repaired cleft palate. CV syllables with high vowels appear to trigger velar flutter more often than syllables with low vowels.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Zajac
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Preisser
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002971:Cleft Lip / Q000601:surgery*; D002972:Cleft Palate / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013060:Speech; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014833:Voice Quality
keywords: cleft palate; nasal turbulence; spectral characteristics; velar flutter