Normative Nasalance Scores for Middle-Aged and Elderly Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Objectives: This study establishes normative nasalance values for middle-aged and elderly Brazilian Portuguese-speakers and investigates age and gender effects across the life span.

Methods: Nasalance scores were obtained from 62 middle-aged (45-59 years) and 60 elderly (60-79 years) participants with normal speech for 3 nonnasal, 1 phonetically balanced, and 2 nasal-loaded test sentences using the Nasometer II 6400. The data were combined with a published data set of 237 speakers in 4 groups: children (5-9 years), adolescents (10-19 years), young adults (20-24 years), and mature adults (25-35 years). A repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to investigate differences between the stimuli by gender and age groups.

Results: There were statistically significant effects of stimulus, gender, and age group, as well as a stimulus-age group interaction effect and a gender-age group interaction effect. The females' mean nasalance scores were higher than those of the males. The mean nasalance scores for the child, adolescent, and young and mature adult speakers were significantly lower than those for the elderly speakers, and the children's scores were significantly lower than those of the middle-aged speakers.

Conclusion: Higher nasalance scores among middle-aged and elderly speakers may indicate physiological changes affecting oral-nasal balance in speech across the life span.

Keywords: Brazilian Portuguese; Cleft palate; Nasalance scores; Nasometer; Nasometry; Speech.