Processamento auditivo e consciência fonológica em crianças com aquisição de fala normal e desviante***** Auditory processing and phonological awareness in children with normal and deviant speech development

Background: auditory processing (AP) and phonological awareness (PA) in children with and without phonological disorders. Aim: to compare the performance of children with and without phonological disorders in a PA test; to verify the possible relationship between performances in distinct tasks of this test with the performance in the AP evaluation. Method: participants were 44 children with and without the diagnosis of phonological disorder, aged between 5:0 and 7:0 years, of both genders. After speech samples were gathered, subjects were divided into two groups: a study group (SG), composed by children with phonological disorders, and a control group (CG) with children without phonological disorders. PA was assessed through the Protocol Task Awareness Test (PTAT), and through the simplified AP evaluation (screening) Disyllabic change Staggered Spondaic Word (SSW), dichotic listening test and the binaural fusion test. Results: in both PA and AP assessments, children of the CG obtained better results. When correlating the results of AP and PA, a greater number of correlations were observed for the SG. Conclusion: a significant relationship between the performance in the AP evaluation and success in PA tasks exists for children with phonological disorders.