| Summary: | The purpose of this study was to evaluate outcomes of palatometry
therapy for a twenty-two-year-old woman with a bilateral, severe-to-profound
hearing loss, a severe speech sound production disorder, and oral musculature
weakness. Outcomes addressed levels of functioning at the body, activity, and
participation levels (World Health Organization, 1999).
At the level of the body, improvement was noted between pre- and posttherapy
narrow phonetic transcriptions of speech production, and for pre- and
post-therapy palatograms. Specifically, post-therapy palatograms for therapy
targets (/g/, /ʃ/, /tʃ/, and /dʒ/) and generalization targets (/s/, /z/, and /k/) showed
improved linguapalatal contact patterns compared with pre-therapy
palatograms.
To obtain a measure of intelligibility (an activity level measure), five
listeners who were unfamiliar with disordered speech were asked to complete
open- and closed-set word identification tasks and an open-set sentence
identification task. Word identification improved for both the open-set and
closed-set tasks. An average gain of 34% was noted for word identification in the
closed-set task. Identification of target phonemes within the open-set word
identification task was worse than within the closed-set word identification task.
In addition, each listener orthographically transcribed six sentences.
Level of participation (WHO, 1999) was assessed on the basis of responses
from questionnaires administered to the speaker and on the basis of listeners'
perceptions. Generally, responses from the participant indicated improved selfconfidence
but the presence of some participation restrictions related to her
hearing impairment. Listeners' perceptions suggested that the speaker would
likely encounter more participation restrictions in situations that involved
speech as the primary mode of communication compared to situations involving
primarily non-oral modes of communication.
Overall, the results suggested that palatometry therapy had a positive
effect on reduction in speech impairment, on reducing activity limitations, and in
improving the participant's self-confidence and self-awareness as a participant
within society.
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