Resumo

SUAREZ-BRAND, Janneth; FLOREZ-ROMERO, Rita  e  ESPINOSA-REYES, Paola. Using a nasometer 6200 in the phonoaudiological evaluation of nasality in Colombian infants. rev.fac.med. [online]. 2011, vol.59, n.3, pp.245-254. ISSN 0120-0011.

Background. Computerised measurement of nasality assists phonoaudiology and other disciplines to judge normality or abnormality regarding resonance when talking and the effectiveness of treatment for improving intelligibility. Objectives. Using perceptual and instrumental measurements for comparing the development of Spanish-speaking children's nasality and nasalance. Materials and methods. Nasalance was measured in 60 three-to five-year old children from strata 2 and 3 in Bogotá using an IBM-compatible 6200 Kay Elemetrics Corp nasometer, nasality was measured by using nasal phoneme repertory identification (bilabial nasal /m/, alveolar nasal /n/ and palatal nasal /ñ/) and phonological nasal development by using the APPS test in Spanish. Results. Nasalance in three to five year-old Spanishspeaking Colombian infants ranged from 38%-41%; a discrete and continuous increase was observed as chronological age advanced. High scores were obtained regarding nasalance measurement standard deviation which could have been associated with the development of nasal phonemes and other factors such as vocalic context, the voice's acoustic qualities, prosodic variations and physiological changes in oronasal tract conditions, affecting infants' nasality. Conclusions. The measurements of nasalance in boys and girls participating in the study were 10% below the average reported for adult Spanish-speakers in other countries, thereby showing the need for developing and validating specific tests for evaluating nasalance in Spanishspeaking children. This study led to advances in describing Spanish-speakers nasality from a development perspective, such phenomenon being of interdisciplinary interest in the fields of phonoaudiology, physics, medicine and linguistics.

Palavras-chave : speech; language and hearing sciences; rehabilitation of speech and lagnguage disordes; language development (MeSH).

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