Children's Attitudes toward Peers with Unintelligible Speech Associated with Cleft Lip and/or Palate

Abstract

Typically developing children tended to make negative social and personal attribute judgments about children with cleft palate based solely on the intelligibility of their speech. Society, educators, and health professionals should work together to ensure that children with cleft palate are not stigmatized by their peers.

Speech in 10-Year-Olds Born with Cleft Lip and Palate: What Do Peers Say?

“…A listeners attitudes and judgments about a person's age, health, social and educational status are often based on the person's speech characteristics (Allard & Williams, 2008). Negative stereotyping, due to communication disorders, is of high importance to society, since it may cause psychological, educational, and employment disadvantages (Lee et al, 2016). Also in children negative attitudes toward peers with speech impairments have been observed and subjective perceptions of speech have been related to social acceptance (Blood & Hyman, 1977;Watterson et al, 2013).…”

“She Sounds Like a Small Child or Perhaps She has Problems”—Peers' Descriptions of Speech in 7-Year-Olds Born With Cleft Palate

“…Witt et al (1997) concluded that peer group evaluations of cleft palate speech are more relevant to the patients themselves. Lee et al (2017) stated that there is an apparent gap in our knowledge about children's attitudes to their peers with cleft palate speech. They investigated typically developing children's attitudes to speech samples of children born with cleft palate with varying speech intelligibility.…”

Problems With Reliability of Speech Variables for Use in Quality Registries for Cleft Lip and Palate—Experiences From the Swedish Cleft Lip and Palate Registry

“…Good intelligibility is crucial for speech function and social interaction in everyday life (Lee et al, 2016). Therefore, a valid measure of intelligibility is of great importance when evaluating CP care.…”