Estudo correlacional sobre o desempenho de crianças em tarefas de percepção da fala e em testes de resolução temporal auditiva

Abstract

Objectives: Verify the existence of the relationship between speech perception abilities and auditory temporal resolution in children without language or hearing disorders, and investigate if variables age and sex affect those abilities. Methods: The work, a correlational study, was conducted with 80 children, 40 male and 40 female, from seven to 10 years old, from a public school in the state of Minas Gerais. In order to select for the sample subjects without evidence of language or hearing disorders, aspects of language and writing, speaking and listening were evaluated in initial screening and in a second stage, which were performed the following procedures: research of contralateral acoustic reflexes , pure tone audiometry, logoaudiometry test, sound localization test, sequencing of non-verbal sounds test, sequencing of verbal sounds test, non-verbal dichotic test, dichotic digits test and speech in noise test. To obtain the data of variables in the study, were used two tasks of speech perception, phonemic discrimination and alliteration, which assess the skills involved in the mechanisms of acoustic-phonetic mapping of speech sounds and phonological processing, respectively.Moreover, to extract the measures concerning to the abilities of auditory temporal resolution, were applied two tests to know the gap detection threshold: Random Gap Detection Test (RGDT) and Gaps-In-Noise Test (GIN). Results: A total of 80 children were subjected to initial screening, 49 had adequate results and, excluding 12 losses, 37 subjects completed the evaluation of the second stage, where only five children showed adequate results according to criterions described in the literature. Data from the 37 children (62% female and 38% male)for the variables obtained in the second stage of evaluation as well as in tasks of speech perception tasks and GIN RGDT were analyzed by partial correlation, to control the covariables, removing, for example, effects of differences among the subjects` performances in the auditory processing tests. There was no correlation between measures of children performance on speech perception tasks and temporal resolution tests, and there was no statistically significant differences between the performances of children according to variable sex. The age factor was found to be important for the skills assessed in phonemic discrimination task, where older children showed better performances. The subjects with adequate results in non-verbal dichotic test showed speech perception skills superior to those with altered results. Conclusions: The results showed no association between speech perception and auditory temporal resolution abilities, and the variables sex and age did notinfluence in the abilities of these children significantly, except the ability of acoustic phonetic analysis, which was more developed in older children. The results also showed a high prevalence of auditory processing disorders in the population studied.