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.