Normative data on nasalance scores for Swedish as measured on the Nasometer: Influence of dialect, gender, and age

This study was conducted to establish normative nasalance values for Swedish speaking children as measured with the Nasometer II, and to investigate differences due to regional dialect, gender, and age. Two hundred and twenty healthy children aged 4-5, 6-7, and 9-11 years were included. Group mean nasalance scores for four speech stimuli were calculated and compared. There were no significant differences due to dialect or gender for children in the study. For age there was a significant difference on nasal sentences between the youngest group of children and the other two groups, age 4-5 vs age 6-7 (t=-2.844, p=.006) and for age 4-5 vs age 9-11 (t=-2.888, p=.005). The results from this study have both clinical significance for Swedish SLPs working with resonance disorders, and theoretical significance for linguists studying features of dialects and languages.