Dorothy Sherman

Nasality and precision of articulation.

Two reading passages, one with nasal consonants and one without, were tape-recorded for 72 subjects: 34 selected as having precise articulation and 38 selected as having imprecise articulation. These speech samples were evaluated for degree of precision and also for degree of nasality by the psychological scaling method of equal-appearing intervals employing a 7-point scale. Analysis indicated a relationship between degree of precision and degree of unpleasant nasality, that is, a tendency for decreases in precision to be accompanied by increases in nasality and a tendency for males to be more imprecise in articulation and more nasal than females.

Equal-appearing interval scale values and successive interval scale values derived from the same set of ratings.

Both equal-appearing interval scale values and successive interval scale values were computed for each of five sets of ratings on five different kinds of stimuli. The scale values obtained by these two methods rank ordered almost identically the stimuli which were scaled. For all five sets of ratings, the Pearson r for estimating the relationship between the two sets of scale values was equal to or greater than .99. In view of the close relationship between the scale values derived by the two methods, practical considerations would make the method of equal-appearing intervals the preferable one for many purposes.