Abstract
There are few evaluation methods to judge the severity of articulation disorders in patients with cleft palate. Therefore, we investigated the correction ratio and backing score by articulation testing in order to assess the severity of articulation disorders.
1. Calculation of correction ratio in evaluation of articulation disorders
We included 67 patients (aged 4 to 18 years of age) with cleft palate who underwent palatoplasty. Then, we assessed the correction ratios in these patients by articulation testing and compared the correction ratios associated with different types of articulation disorders as well as the speech intelligibility during conversation in patients who underwent these procedures.
The correction ratios for glottal stop and mid-dorsum palatal stop were lower than those for other articulation disorders (p < 0.01, p < 0.05). In the speech understandability analyses, we classified the patients into five groups according to the intelligibility of their conversation. Group I, in which speech is always easy to understand, showed a high score (p < 0.01).
2. Evaluation of the backing score from the site of articulation
We included 13 patients (4 to 12 years of age) with cleft palate who had shown retraction of the site of articulation. Assessments were based on perceptual evaluation during utterance of /s/, /t/, /ts/ and /ɕ/. Then, the results were calculated as the backing score (0 to 12 points), which denotes the difference between normality and abnormality of the site of articulation. We observed high scores in the case of glottal stop and mid-dorsum palatal stop, which involve gaps retracting from the site of articulation.
Furthermore, we observed that the correcting ratio decreased when the backing score increased. There was a correlation between the correcting ratio and backing score (r = -0.8).
These results indicate that the correction ratio and backing score can provide information regarding the recovery process in articulation disorders and serve as objective indicators of articulation while providing feedback regarding the severity of the condition and the patient's intelligibility during speech therapy for articulation disorders.
