Nasalance scores in normal thai adults

Background: There is limited information exists on normative nasalance scores in normal Thai adults. Objective: To investigate the normative nasalance scores and how age and gender influence nasalance scores in normal Thai adults. Materials and Methods: After passing screening tests of communication disorders, 290 normal Thai adults were included as samples. Nasalance scores were obtained using nasometry when subjects read 3 Thai passages comprising Passage 1 which was the oral passage without nasal consonants, Passage 2 that was composed of a series of sentences containing 35% nasal consonants, and Passage 3 which was loaded the oro-nasal passage that included both oral and nasal consonants. Results: Mean nasalance scores for Passage 1, Passage 2, and Passage 3 were 16.69±5.21%, 51.64±4.98%, and 42.46±5.41%, respectively. Results did not show an explicit relationship between nasalance scores and age for all passages but revealed that females had significantly higher nasalance scores than males for all three reading passages at p<0.05. Conclusion: Present study determined that gender affected nasalance scores for Thai adults whereas age did not. Additional factors should be concerned and might be addressed through further research including dialect, hearing level, etc.