OCCURRENCE OF DENTAL CONSONANT MISARTICULATIONS IN DIFFERENT CLEFT TYPES

To study the occurrence and type of misarticulations in dental consona nts /r/, /s/ and /l/ 280 (115 girls, 165 boys) 6-year-old cleft childr en were examined by 1 of the 2 experienced speech pathologists of the cleft team. The patients included 82 children with isolated cleft pala te (CP), 82 with cleft lip with (34) or without (48) cleft alveolus [C L(A)], 85 with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) and 31 with bila teral cleft lip and palate (BCLP). CP children were first divided into subgroups; there were 17 children with soft palate cleft, 49 with par tial and 16 with complete hard palate cleft. All patients were native Finnish speakers, and had normal hearing, no known syndrome or associa ted anomalies possibly affecting speech or psychomotor retardation. Th e results showed that the occurrence and severity as well as the numbe r of errors of all studied sounds separately or grouped increased with the severity of the cleft being constantly greatest in the BCLP group and lowest in the CL(A) group. Altogether 44% of the patients misarti culated at least one studied sound; 41% distorted and 5% substituted, and 2% both distorted and substituted. The /r/ sound was misarticulate d by 36%, the /s/ sound by 23%, and the /l/ sound by 18% of the patien ts. Boys tend to have more problems in producing the studied sounds co rrectly.