PURPOSE: To verify the relationship between the use of the compensatory lengthening strategy and the awareness of their own speech impairment, as well as between the latest and different writing hypotheses. METHODS: The sample was composed by children with ages between five years, zero months and 26 days and six years, 11 days and 26 days, diagnosed with phonological disorder. The Awareness of Their Own Speech Impairment Test and the Writing Hypotheses Evaluation were carried out. The compensatory lengthening strategy was identified using acoustic spectrography, and subjects were divided into two groups: one that uses the compensatory lengthening strategy, and another one that does not use this strategy. It was analyzed the relation between the use of the compensatory lengthening strategy and the awareness of their own speech impairment, both individually and between the groups. The sample was also divided according to the writing hypotheses into a group with pre-syllabic and a group with syllabic writing hypothesis. Data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS: The results showed that the group that did not use the compensatory lengthening strategy had higher awareness of their own speech impairment than the group that used the compensatory lengthening strategy. The group with syllabic writing hypothesis achieved higher average than the group with pre-syllabic writing hypothesis regarding awareness of their own speech impairment. CONCLUSION: Children can either use the compensatory lengthening strategy and not be aware of their own Speech Impairment, or be aware and not use the strategy. It was observed a possible relationship between awareness of their own speech impairment and writing hypothesis.
Speech; Speech disorders; Speech acoustics; Learning; Speech perception
