A longitudinal group study of speech development in Danish children born with and without cleft lip and palate

The present study focuses on contoid vocalization by Danish 1-year-old unre paired toddlers born with cleft lip and palate, and how they differ from th eir non-cleft peers. Furthermore, we focus on how the same children master Danish consonants at 3 years of age compared with their non-cleft peers in terms of their ability to produce consonants in accordance with adult targe t. Also, with the 3 year olds, we look at cleft speech characteristics as w ell as developmental speech characteristics found in both groups of childre n. Based on phonetic transcripion, it was found that Danish unoperated clef t palate children at 1 year of age produced few types of contoids and prefe rably contoids that did not require closure of the velopharyngeal port in t heir prespeech. In addition, the data suggest that consonants produced by c left children who are treated with one-stage surgery after speech onset, at 3 years of age differ from speech produced by non-cleft children, not only as regards cleft speech characteristics, but also as regards developmental speech characteristics.