Variability in vowel formant frequencies of children with cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a developmental motor disorder and the study of the speech characteristics and developmental speech patterns may provide valuable information on early speech development. Vowels appear early in speech development and they are central to the understanding of the acoustic properties of speech. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine the differences of vowel formant frequencies among five children with cerebral palsy in different severity ranging from ages 3 to 7. First and second vowel formants (F1 and F2) were measured to investigate: 1) the changes of the F1 and F2 values, 2) vowel space, and 3) the vowel space area in CP children of different ages and severity. The major findings are: 1) There was no obvious decline in F2 values from 3 to 7 years old, which indicated delayed speech development; 2) The overlapping ellipses of all vowel spaces illustrated unstable motor control in all the five children; and 3) The five CP children had centralized corner vowels and there was no expansion of vowel spaces at different ages. This indicated their limited motor control.