| Abstract | Objective: Due to a literature gap on the attitudes of adult lay listeners towards nasality and understanding that peer attitudes are an important environmental factor, this study aims to assess the effect of voice nasality degrees on the attitudes of lay adult native Chilean Spanish speakers.
Methods / Design: Employing an experimental design, a sample of 56 college students (21 years old median age; 42.86% females) were enrolled. Participants were randomly divided into two groups and exposed to Python-built online experiments presenting voices with different degrees of nasality recorded by two professional actors trained to simulate nasality (Group A (n = 23): mild to moderate hypernasal stimulus and a non-nasal stimulus; Group B (n = 33): severely hypernasal stimulus and a non-nasal stimulus). Attitudes were measured by scoring semantic differentials on a 7-point scale that addresses cognitive dimensions (intelligence, confidence, interesting, etc) and perceived nasality rated on a 3-point scale (1 = non-nasal; 2 = somewhat nasal; 3 = very nasal). Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test was employed to compare attitudes toward nasality within both groups and the U-Mann-Whitney test to compare attitudes between both groups.
Results: Significant differences were found when comparing the attitudes toward the non-nasal versus hypernasal voices in both groups (Group A: W = 834.5, p < 0.001; Group B: W = 545, p 0.05). Regarding perceived nasality ratings, the mild to moderate level was also overestimated, being rated the same as the severely hypernasal. This study provides a new perspective regarding lay participants attitude variation toward people with voice nasality.
Conclusions: The presence of nasality prompted more negative attitudes compared to non-nasal voices. However, the participants failed to differentiate severity reacting the same to both nasality levels. These results open the debate to discuss therapeutic targets and continuity, considering that mild to moderate hypernasality was perceived and stigmatized to the same degree as severe hypernasality. Additionally, these results underscore the need to educate the population regarding nasality to promote a more inclusive environment for hypernasal patients.
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