PERCEPTION OF POSTPALATOPLASTY SPEECH DIFFERENCES IN SCHOOL-AGE-CHILDREN BY PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND PROFESSIONAL SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS

The aims of this study were twofold: (1) to test the ability of parent s and teachers to discriminate the speech of children with repaired cl eft palate from that of their unaffected peers and (2) to compare thes e lay assessments of speech acceptability with the critical perceptual assessments of expert clinicians. The subjects for this study were 20 children of school age (age range, 8 to 12 years) who were drawn from a large population (n = 1282) of patients. All subjects had been refe rred for palatoplasty to the same tertiary cleft center between 1978 a nd 1991. There were 16 matched controls. The listening team included p arents of subjects (n = 32) and teachers of age-matched school childre n (n = 12). Randomized master audiotape recordings of the study group were presented in blinded fashion to both groups of the adult raters, who were inexperienced in the evaluation of patients with speech dysfu nction. An experienced panel of three extramural speech pathologists e valuated the same recordings. In all parameters rated, both parents an d teachers showed a consistent tendency to give the subject children m ore negative ratings than the control children. Expert raters were sen sitive to differences in resonance and intelligibility in the control and cleft palate groups. Results of this study differ from similar pre vious research, indicating that naive peer raters (similar-age childre n) were insensitive to speech differences in the cleft palate and cont rol groups.