Normative Score for Nasometer in kannada

Abstract

As there are very few established normalized nasalance score there is a strrmg need for establishment of regional norms. Several studies have shown that nasalance is sensitive to the phonetic composition of the speech stimuli, native language, regional dialect, age, and gender. Hence the present study is aimed at developing the normative nasalance scores across age and gender in children and adults in Kannada using Nasometer II 6400. The present study used 100 normal subjects who are native speakers of Mysore dialect Kannada. Subjects were divided into two groups (50 children and 50 adults). Both groups consisted of equal number of males and females. Eight sentences were constructed in each category (oral & nasal), among which five sentences were selected for norms. Oral and nasal syllables were selected for children who were not able to repeat the sentences. Subjects were also asked to read or repeat all the sentences two times for the purpose of test-retest reliability. The data was analyzed using SPSS soft1vare. Results revealed good test-retest reliability and > 66% of correlation obtained between perceptual and objective method. For cl1ildren the nasalance value for nasal sentences was 51.03 (7.02) and for oral 9.08 (3.49). For syllable repetition task nasalance value for nasal syllables was 66.44 (6.63) and for oral syllables 10.66 (4.07). No significant difference was evident across gender for sentences and syllable repetition. In adults, significant difference was evident across gender. This may be attributed to the basic structural and functional differences between genders. Adults had higher nasalance value compared to children. In males, for nasal sentences the value was 48.27 (8.74) and for oral 8.77 (4.76). In females, for nasal the value was 58.22 (8.40) and for oral 14.69 (5.86). Overall present study shows that adults had higher scores compared to children, especially females had higher score than male in adult age group. As the age increases the syrnpathetic transfer of acoustic energy from oral cavity to the nasal cavity also increases in females.