Abstract
This study investigates the degree of intelligibility and abnormality in the speech of normal children and the speech of children with cleft palate who have problems with glottal stops. Seventy-eight children four to six years of age and sixty-four college and graduate students listened to twelve words and six sentences spoken by three children with repaired cleft palate and by three normal children. Glottal stops and hypernasality or hoarseness characterized the speech of the children with repaired cleft palate. Sentences were made up of two parts: subject/topic and predicate. For the children with repaired cleft palate, the initial words contained glottal stops but the final words none. The main findings were as follows. (1) All listeners judged the intelligibility of the speech of the children with cleft palate as lower than that of normal children. (2) Children aged four to six could not understand the speech of children with cleft palate as well as adults. (3) Adults could understand more cleft palate speech in sentences than in words. (4) Adults and children six years of age felt cleft palate speech to be more abnormal than did children of four and five years of age.
