The author's stated purpose of this book is "an effort to generate a body of diagnostic data relating physical disturbances from palatal clefts to structures and processes of speaking." The specific details of the sources and assessments of the data are of particular relevance to speech pathologists and researchers in speech science. However, the trends emerging from the careful analyses concern all specialists involved in cleft palate habilitation.
A major contribution of this study is Fletcher's identification and emphasis on the many variables that affect the speech performance of individuals with palate clefts. Among professionals as well as patients, there is often a tendency to preoccupation with the effects of the velopharyngeal closure mechanism per se while overlooking or minimizing other coexistent factors that may deleteriously affect speech production. Specialists working with these patients may be disappointed that, despite excellent surgical results in terms of the physiology of the