Analysis of distortions in children with and without phonological disorders.
OBJECTIVE
To verify using 4 different tests the incidence of distortions in children with and without phonological disorders.


METHODS
Forty children between 4 and 10.2 years of age, divided into 2 groups: 20 with normal development and 20 with phonological disorders. All children underwent the phonology tests of the Child Language Assessment ABFW and 2 spontaneous speaking tests to assess for phonologic alterations. After recording, the data were printed, analyzed, and classified according to the distortions. Nonparametric (Mann-Whitney) statistical analysis was performed with the significance level being set at P <.05.


RESULTS
The phonological disorder group had significantly more occurrences of distortions in all tests compared to the control group (naming, P = .04; imitation P <.001; spontaneous speaking 1, P = .01; and spontaneous speaking 2, P = .002. The Pearson correlation coefficients of the distortion occurrences among the 4 tests were high.


CONCLUSIONS
The phonological disorder group presented a greater number of distortions in all tests. The most frequent ones were /s, z, 3/ and the variability found within the phonological disorder group was very high. The children in this group had unstable phonological systems and so presented a high number of different distortions. Regarding the evaluation of the phonologic system, all the tests were good evaluation methods since the correlations between them were high.
Wertzner
Haydée Fiszbein
HF
Department of Physiotherapy, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of São Paulo. hfwertzn@usp.br
Sotelo
Mariana Bonafé
MB
Amaro
Luciana
L
D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013637:Tape Recording