Visualising speech: Using ultrasound visual biofeedback to diagnose and treat speech disorders in children with cleft lip and palate

Abstract

Children with cleft lip and palate (CLP) often continue to have problems producing clear speech long after the clefts have been surgically repaired, leading to educational and social disadvantage. Speech is of key importance in CLP from both a quality of life and surgical outcome perspective, yet assessment relies on subjective perceptual methods, with speech and language therapists (SLTs) listening to speech and transcribing errors. This is problematic because perception-based phonetic transcription is well known to be highly unreliable(Howard & Lohmander, 2011) especially in CLP, where the range of error types is arguably far greater than for other speech sound disorders. Moreover,CLP speech is known to be vulnerable to imperceptible error types, such as double articulations which can only be understood with instrumental techniques such as ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI). Incorrect transcription of these errors can result in misdiagnosis and subsequent inappropriate intervention which can lead to speech errors becoming deeply ingrained.