Teste de fala comprimida com figuras: construção e validação do instrumento

Abstract

This research aimed to build and validate an instrument for assessing auditory closure ability with time compression. For this, initially, the authors selected easyto-understand disyllabic words, through the Portuguese Orthographic Vocabulary, children's stories and instruments already commercialized in Brazilian Portuguese, paying attention to the positioning of phonemes in the different positions of syllables and words. It was also decided to insert a semantic distractor for each target word, seeking to avoid approximation responses. All word pairs (target and distractor) passed by expert judges and non-expert judges, that is, Doctors in the field of Phonetics/Phonology and Audiology and children aged between 6:0 and 8:11, respectively. After a careful analysis, the selected words were analyzed by a Speech Therapist, PhD in Linguistics, who performed a phonetic balancing and created two lists with 25 target words and 25 semantic distractors, each. Later, an Industrial Design specialist reproduced these words in figures that were easy and simple to identify. Again, the items were analyzed by expert and non-expert judges. When judged as “unknown” or “inadequate”, they were excluded from the study or redone with the suggestions provided. After the visual construction of the instrument, the test was recorded in the studio of the Federal University of Santa Maria, and analyzed by a Speech Therapist with expertise in the area of Voice. After adjustments, with the help of an audio visual technician, the recording underwent time compression modifications of 60%, which was already cited as the best percentage of compression to evaluate the ability of auditory closure. The introductory word “show” was inserted before each word, aiming to call the child's attention to what comes next. The next step was based on the application of the instrument in a pilot sample, seeking to understand the existence of flaws, such as the use of terms and/or figures that were not understandable to the participants or ambiguity in some instruction or drawing. However, the instrument proved to be easy and quick to apply. Finally, the same was done in children with typical and atypical phonological development, aged between 6:0 and 8:11. The construct analysis was performed through the correlation between the Compressed Speech Test with Figures and the Adapted Compressed Speech Test (gold standard), which evidenced a nearly perfect correlation. In the criterion analysis, both the group with typical and atypical phonological development presented satisfactory results, which may be linked to the absence of variation in the severity of the phonological disorder, with all children having a mild disorder. The inter- evaluator reliability analysis demonstrated that the protocol is easy to analyze, since both professionals involved in the stage presented unanimous answers. Thus, it was possible to construct and validate the auditory closure ability assessment instrument with time compression.