A Primary Study On The Objective Evaluation Of Chinese Vowel Hi Children With Cleft Plate

The objective evaluation of speech is the key step in speech therapy which is one of the most important part hi the multidisciplinary management of children with cleft palate. The study.from the point of view of acoustics, aims to establish an effective way for the objective evaluation of Chinese vowel of cleft palate children instead of velopharyngeal competence.The first part of study is to obtain references of objective evaluation to speech of children with cleft palate by surveying and analysising the first three formants of Chinese vowels hi 3~7 years-old children.Methods:The first three formants of Chinese vowels of 80 normal children aged 3~7 years old were measured and analyzed with Speech Analyzerl.5.Results:T-test shows no significant difference was found between male and female groups.Conclusion:The results of our study is reliable and the data is helpful to objective evaluation of speech of children with cleft palate.The second part of study is to establish acoustic three-dimensional model of vowel of normal Chinese children aged 3 ~ 7 years old.MethodsrSoftware MatlabS.3 was used to establish acoustic three-dimensional model by demarcating axis x,y and z with FI ^2 and Fa of Chinese vowel in arithmetic scale.ResuIts:The acoustic three-dimensionalmodel of normal Chinese children shows directly the acoustic features of Chinese vowels and dimensional ubieties among them in full scale.Conclusion:It is easy to find the acoustic differences of speech between normal children and children with cleft palate through the acoustic three-dimensional model.The third part of study is to establish the acoustic three-dimensional model of CP by which the speech is evaluated.Methods:The first three formants of Chinese vowels of 37 cleft palate children were measured and analyzed with Speech Analyzer 1.5 and the acoustic three-dimensional model was established with software Matlab5.3 to compare with normal one. Results: Three dimensional appeal of mormal model is better than the abnormal one because the shift of formant of CP except [a] .The CP model shows the spatial change of ubiety of vowel and the difference from normal one,in fact,the CP model is anomalous. ConclusionrThe establishment of acoustic three demensional model is an effective way for evaluating the speech of CP objectively.