PURPOSE: to examine the relation between abilities in phonological awareness and awareness of the own speech impairment with different severity levels of phonological disorders. METHODS: 14 children took part in this study, aged between 5:0 and 6:11, showing phonological disorder diagnosis. Phonological disorders were classified in two perspectives: quantitative and qualitative. According to the quantitative approach, the groups were classified in Medium, Medium-Moderate and Moderate-Severe deviation. According to the qualitative approach there were the group with Delayed characteristics and the group with Initial characteristics. In order to collect the data, the Test of Phonological Awareness and the assessment of the awareness regarding their own speech impairment were adopted. Data were analyzed based on Kruskal-Wallis statistic test. RESULTS: statistically significant differences were observed in the tasks of nominal realism and syllable detection among the groups classified according to the qualitative approach. For the groups classified according to the quantitative approach, there was not statistically significant difference in the Test of Phonological Awareness. However, considering the assessment, the awareness of their own speech impairment, just these last groups presented statistically significant differences among themselves. CONCLUSION: a possible relation was identified between the performance in the phonological awareness tasks and the different severity levels of phonological disorder, mainly in a qualitative approach. The awareness of their own speech impairment also seems to be influenced by the different severity levels of phonological disorder, mainly in a quantitative approach.
Speech; Speech Disorders; Child; Language
