Purpose
The present study investigated the characteristics of phonological information processing as manifested in the writing of dictated syntagmas, capable of indicating possible correlations and the predictive impact between the analyzed orthography errors (coding of voiced and voiceless phonemes, undue segmentation and word junction) according to the school system.
Methods
Eighty children from both genders, aged between 6 and 11 years, were selected from those regularly enrolled between the 2nd and 5th years of primary education, in both public and private schools in the municipality of São Paulo. The participants wrote, as dictated to them, 34 noun syntagmas composed of high frequency words.
Results
The three types of error were correlated with one another according to different patterns in each school system. In the public schools, voice-voiceless coding errors and undue segmentations were positively correlated. Perception characteristics directed to the metric foot and the syllable might have influenced the children’s performance. As for the results in private schools, the perception of the phonological word, phonological phrase and intonational phrase might have influenced the correlations between errors of the voiced-voiceless type and junctions.
Conclusion
Voiced-voiceless coding errors, word junction and undue separation manifested differently between private and public schools, regarding writing performance. Only in private schools could the voiced-voiceless coding errors predict those of word junction and hypersegmentation.
Handwriting; Education; primary and secondary; Speech; language and hearing sciences; Evaluation studies; Language; Psycholinguistics