PURPOSE:
describing and comparing the fluency patterns on children´s speech with and without evolutive phonological disorder.
METHODS:
the sample was 20 subjects aged between 4:6 and 7:6; 10 of them with the diagnosis of evolutive phonological disorder and 10 with a normal speech development. The subjects of both groups were submitted to speech fluency evaluation, which is part of the Teste de Linguagem Infantil - ABFW. Based on this protocol, the speech disruptions types (which are classified as typical disfluencies, and less typical disfluencies) were analyzed, and, after that, the speech disruptions frequency and the percentage of less typical disfluencies were calculated. Through this test it was also analyzed the speech rate, by measuring the flow of words and syllables per minute.
RESULTS:
there was no statistically significant difference between the groups related to the analyzed variables. However, it was perceived that in all variables, except the flow of words and syllables per minute, the group with evolutive phonological disorder has higher averages than the group with typical phonological development. As to the speech speed, concerning the number of syllables per minute, there seems to exist a tendency to a lower flow on the group with evolutive phonological disorder.
CONCLUSION:
it was verified that there is a tendency to occur disfluency in the group of children with evolutive phonological disorder, as well as a slower speech speed in all subjects of this group.
Speech Disorders; Speech-Language Pathology; Child Language; Child; Speech
