If a child finds it difficult to blow, pinching the nose can help regulate airflow. The child should then practice speech sounds without pinching the nose.

These exercises only work as treatments if hypernasality is small. Severe deviations should be treated surgically.

There is insufficient evidence to support the use of traditional non-speech oral motor exercises can reduce hypernasality. Velopharyngeal closure patterns and their underlying neuromotor control may differ for speech and nonspeech activities. Therefore, the increase in velar movement through blowing, sucking, and swallowing may not transfer to speech tasks. Thus, hypernasality remains while individual speak. Kuehn proposed a new way of treatment by using a CPAP machine during speech tasks. The positive pressure provided by a CPAP machine provides resistance to stregthen velopharyngeal muscles. With nasal mask in place, an individual is asked to produce VNCV syllables and short sentences. It is believed that CPAP therapy can increase both muscle endurance as well as strength because it overloads the levator veli palatini muscle and involves a regimen with a large number of repetitions of velar elevation. Research findings proved that patients with hypernasality due to flaccid dysarthria, TBI or cleft palate do eliminate hypernasality after receiving this training program.

In psychiatry, stilted speech or pedantic speech is communication characterized by situationally inappropriate formality. This formality can be expressed both through abnormal prosody as well as speech content that is "inappropriately pompous, legalistic, philosophical, or quaint". Often, such speech can act as evidence for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or a thought disorder, a common symptom in schizophrenia or schizotypal personality disorder.

To diagnose stilted speech, researchers have previously looked for the following characteristics:

- speech conveying more information than necessary

- vocabulary and grammar expected from formal writing rather than conversational speech

- unneeded repetition or corrections

While literal and long-winded word content is often the most identifiable feature of stilted speech, such speech often displays irregular prosody, especially in resonance. Often, the loudness, pitch, rate, and nasality of pedantic speech vary from normal speech, resulting in the perception of pedantic or stilted speaking. For example, overly loud or high-pitched speech can come across to listeners as overly forceful while slow or nasal speech creates an impression of condescension.

These attributions, which are commonly found in patients with ASD, partially account for why stilted speech has been considered a diagnostic criteria for the disorder. Stilted speech, along with atypical intonation, semantic drift, terseness, and perseveration, are all qualities known to be commonly impaired during conversation with adolescents on the autistic spectrum. Often, stilted speech found in children with ASD will also be especially stereotypic or rehearsed.

Patients with schizophrenia are also known to experience stilted speech. This symptom is attributed to both an inability to access more commonly used words and a difficulty understanding pragmatics, or the relationship between language and context. However, stilted speech appears as less common symptom compared to a certain number of other symptoms of the psychosis (Adler "et al" 1999). This element of cognitive disorder is also exhibited as a symptom in the narcissistic personality disorder (Akhtar & Thomson 1982).

In its more common usage, "stilted speech" is a term used to describe overly-formal, unnatural-sounding speech.