Normative Data and Dialectical Effects on Nasalance in Flemish Adults

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of dialect and gender and to obtain normative nasalance values for Flemish adults as measured with the Nasometer II. Subjects and Methods: One hundred and sixty-four adult subjects from the five regions in Flanders corresponding to different dialects were included in the study. The group consisted of 71 adult men and 93 adult women with a mean age of 43 years and an age range between 20 and 82 years (SD 16). Nasalance scores of connected speech using an oral, an oronasal and a nasal text were measured with the Nasometer II model 6450. Results: The nasalance scores for the oral, oronasal and nasal texts are provided in this study. No significant differences were found across the five dialects and between men and women. Conclusion: This study provides new Flemish normative data as measured with the Nasometer II model 6450. The results of this study are very important for clinical purposes and for future Flemish studies collecting nasalance scores of subjects with different dialects.

Nasalância de populações falantes do português brasileiro de dois estados distintos

“…A study conducted in Greece (24) , which evaluated 80 healthy young adults (40 males and 40 females) monolingual speakers of Greek, showed that, in addition to the fact that no significant difference was found between genders, Greek obtained lower nasalance scores than other languages examined in previous surveys. In a study conducted in Belgium, which evaluated the influence of gender and the effects of five different dialects of Flemish on nasalance, no statistically significant differences were found (26) .…”

“…Dialectal influence on nasalance scores has been investigated by several authors worldwide; however, whereas some authors have found differences between the dialects investigated (15,24,25) , others have reported that this is not a significant factor (13,14,20,26) .…”

“…Therefore, this fact justifies the absence of difference between nasalance scores in the populations of the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais at early age. Many studies have been conducted to investigate the influence of gender in nasalance scores; some found no significant differences (7,24,26) , whereas others described a tendency for the female gender to present higher scores compared with those of the male gender (14,15,17,25) . In this study, no difference was observed between the male and female genders in both groups for the three texts, corroborating the findings of other studies in the literature (7,24,26) .…”

“…Many studies have been conducted to investigate the influence of gender in nasalance scores; some found no significant differences (7,24,26) , whereas others described a tendency for the female gender to present higher scores compared with those of the male gender (14,15,17,25) . In this study, no difference was observed between the male and female genders in both groups for the three texts, corroborating the findings of other studies in the literature (7,24,26) . However, verification of the data revealed a trend of higher nasalance scores in women from Minas Gerais state compared with those of men in the same group for the nasal-2 text, as observed in some studies with adult populations (14,17,25,29) .…”

“…Other studies have also investigated the influence of dialect and gender on nasalance measures, but not with Brazilians (14,17,20,24,26) . A study compared the nasalance values of young adults, normal speakers of Flemish and other languages, during the reading of three sets of sentences (one oral, one nasal, and one oronasal).…”