Normative Nasalance Values in a Population of French-Speaking Children

Normative nasalance scores are essential for diagnosis and clinical follow-up. This research was conducted to establish a European French language protocol for nasometry and determine normative nasalance values for European French-speaking children. One hundred and seven French-speaking children aged 5–14 years (mean age, 9 years) with normal speech were included in this prospective study. Participants were asked to repeat different oral and nasal sounds (phonemes, words, sentences, and logatomes) and speech samples were recorded using a Nasometer II model. Normative nasalance values were measured with the Nasometer II model, including differences due to age, gender, context, and first language. Mean nasalance scores were 17% (95% CI, 6–39) for oral words, 13% (5–29) for oral sentences, 71% (50–84) for nasal words, and 63% (37–80) for nasal sentences. A significant effect of age on nasalance (p < .05) was observed with the highest scores in the youngest children, aged 5–6 years. There was no significant gender or mother tongue effect on nasalance scores. Nasalance values of oral speech samples were comparable with those reported for other languages. Findings indicated that our protocol is a simple and rapid-to-use tool that is applicable for French-speaking children in order to determine normative nasalance values. It can be recommended as an evaluation tool, as well as a quality control, following surgery and/or speech therapy.