Acoustic-temporal aspects of stop-plosives in the speech of Persian-speaking children with cleft lip and palate.

PURPOSE: The main objective was to examine temporal parameters of stop-plosives in Persian-speaking children with repaired cleft lip and palate (CLP).

METHOD: Eleven children with repaired bilateral CLP and 20 typically-developing children participated in the study. Stop-gap duration (SGD) and voice-onset time (VOT) were measured based on digital waveform and spectrographic displays.

RESULT: Separate linear mixed model analyses showed significantly longer SGDs for children with CLP for all plosives in word-mid and final positions. Furthermore, children with CLP tend to produce longer VOTs for all voiceless plosives.

CONCLUSION

Persian-speaking children with repaired CLP prolong stop-gap segments, similar to findings reported for English-speaking children with CLP. Prolonged segments may be due to an active strategy to increase oral air pressure and/or improve perceptual accuracy of speech segments.