Relationship between postural cephalic pattern and speech intelligibility

ABSTRACT Purpose: the objective of this study was to establish an associative factor that connects the morphology of the craniocervical system with the articulatory speech intelligibility level in young subjects. Methods: a cross-sectional study which considered a sample of 42 university students from a universe of 140, both male and female, without morbid background ranging between 18 and 21 years of age. Evaluated aspects: a) articulatory intelligibility by the diadochokinetic periodic variation coefficient, b) traditional static postural parameters using the photogrammetric method, and c) cephalic postural pattern by lateral cephalometry (X-ray) Results: 36 subjects with adequate intelligibility and 6 with altered intelligibility where the anteroposterior cranio-cervical rotation variable showed significant differences (p = 0.009) between the group with normal intelligibility and the group with impaired intelligibility. The linear regression analysis demonstrated that subjects with posterior head-neck rotation exhibited more variability in the syllable emission of diadochokinetic speech performance (Sq r linear = 0.128). Conclusion: it is established that the cephalic position with subsequent posterior head-neck rotation is associated with the loss of speech intelligibility in the studied sample.