ASPECTOS DA FLUÊNCIA DA FALA EM CRIANÇAS COM E SEM DESVIO FONOLÓGICO EVOLUTIVO Aspects of speech fluency in children with and without evolutive phonological disorder

ABSTRACTPurpose: to describe and to compare the fluency patterns of children speech with or without evolutive phonological disorder. Methods: the sample was made up by 20 subjects aged between 4:6 and 7:6; 10 with diagnosis of evolutive phonological disorder and 10 with a typical speech development. The subjects of both groups were submitted to speech fluency evaluation, which is part of the Language Test for Young Children – ABFW. Based on this protocol, we analyzed the typologies of speech flow ruptures, which are classified as common disfluency and stutterer’s non-fluency. We calculated the speech rupture frequency and the percentage of stutterer’s disfluency. Through this test we also analyzed the speech speed, measuring the flow of words and syllables per minute. Results: there was no statistically significant difference between the groups related to the analyzed variables. However, we could perceive that in all variables, except for the flow of words and syllables per minute, that the group with evolutive phonological disorder shows higher averages than the group with typical phonological development. As for the speech speed, there seems to be a mild trend for the flow of syllables per minute, in which the group with evolutive phonological development showed a lower flow value.