Quantitative Endoscopic Phototransducer Investigation of Normal Velopharyngeal Physiology

Purpose

The purpose of this research was to learn the extent to which healthy individuals vary in their ability to achieve velopharyngeal closure for speech.

Method

Twenty healthy adult volunteers (10 women, 10 men) were tested using an endoscopic phototransducer system that tracks variations in velopharyngeal closure during speech production. Each speaker produced multiple repetitions of three utterances that differed in phonetic content. The data were amplitude normalized and averaged for each speaker.

Results

Average phototransducer measurements were similar across subjects for utterances containing only oral phonemes. Average percentage of velopharyngeal closure varied considerably among subjects when producing utterances containing both oral and nasal phonemes (54%–95%). Average percentage of velopharyngeal closure levels were significantly lower (p Conclusions

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