COMD 5070 Velopharyngeal Function Questions & Answers(SCORED A)

What populations are affected by velopharyngeal problems? - ANSWER-cleft palate=structure hearing impaired=managing velopharyngeal function dyarthria= What is a cleft palate? - ANSWER-when structures with in the skull and specifically the oral cavity have failed to meet at midline, leaving a gap How common is cleft palate? - ANSWER-1 in 750 What deficit can still occur after surgery for a cleft palate? - ANSWER-the velum itself may be insufficiently long enough to meet with the pharyngeal wall as it constricts to give you good velopharyngeal closure; some individuals may have residual speech problems What kind of velopharyngeal problem would a hearing impaired person have? - ANSWER-managing velopharyngeal function because they don't have the auditory feedback that is required to let them do this properly If a person has marginal or extremely limited hearing what sounds won't they have the sensitivity to hear with their own auditory feedback? - ANSWER-nasal consonants;they are extemely low intensity sounds What things might cause dysarthria? - ANSWER-stroke head injury cerebral palsy progressive neurological disorders How does dysarthria affect the velopharyngeal function? - ANSWER-there is a neruomuscular deficit; the brain sends out signals to the muscles that operate the velopharyngeal port and those signals may not be strong enough and so may not be coordinated with other actions that are needed in the vocal tract; a functional deficit in the activity of the velopharyngeal port resulting in elevated nasality for sounds that ought to be entirely oral What is affected if the velopharyngeal port is not operating appropriately? - ANSWER-serious implications for speech intelligibility and speech quality When there is leakage through the velopharyngeal port it allows? - ANSWER-pressure to escape into the nasal cavity and into the nares; this causes problems for pressure consonants where you really ought to have pressure impounded in the mouth When is nasalization not disordered? - ANSWER-depending upon the consonant context; may be some cases when a linking of the oral and nasal cavities don't affect the overall quality of speech; ex. nasalization of a vowel if it occurs between 2 nasal consonants. What is nasal emission? - ANSWER-occurs in a patient that has fairly severe velopharyngeal insufficiency and air escapes through the nose when the oral pressure is high *not normal; producing a voiceless fricative or a stop What is hypernasality? - ANSWER-results in distortion of vowels because the nasal and oral cavities are linked and the nasal cavity tends to have a damping effect and can influence the clarity of a vowel that is being produced nasal cavity acts as an antiresonance which damps the other formants *not normal What mechanisms result in velopharyngeal problems? - ANSWER-velopharyngeal incompetence and poor timing of velar movements