Multitaper Spectrum Analysis of Consonants Produced by Patients With Dentofacial Disharmonies.

Twenty-five participants were excluded due to noisy recordings caused by suboptimal microphone placement. The study used laboratory speech tasks, so it is unknown if these acoustic patterns hold in more natural conversational speech. The patient sample was preparing for jaw surgery, which involves orthodontic decompensation that exaggerates overbite and overjet measures, potentially affecting the relationship between dental and skeletal factors. Class I AOB was the smallest patient group, making findings for that specific malocclusion less generalizable.

This research was supported by grants from the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Foundation, the American Association of Orthodontists Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.

Do not assume that all consonants are equally affected by dentofacial disharmonies. The study found that /k/ did not show the same spectral amplitude differences as /s t ʃ tʃ/, and neither acoustic measure captured what listeners perceived as distortion for /t/.