The compensatory lengthening strategy and its relation with Phonological Awareness

Abstract

Introduction: the compensatory lengthening strategy consists of a prolonged time in the production of a segment in an attempt to fi ll the missing segment of a constituent. It is believed that children with speech disorders who use this strategy have a greater ease in performing phonological awareness tasks because they have a correct representation for the target absent. The aim of this study is to examine a possible relation between the use of the compensatory lengthening strategy by children presenting phonological disorder with their performance on phonological awareness abilities. Methods: 16 children diagnosed as having phonological disorder aged between 5:0;26 and 6:11;26 participated in this study and were divided in two groups: one group that uses the compensatory lengthening strategy and one group that does not use the compensatory lengthening strategy. The compensatory lengthening strategy was identifi ed using the acoustics program PRAAT. In order to obtain the data, the Phonological Awareness Tasks were applied. The data were analyzed based on the Kruskal-Wallis statistic test. Results: there were not signifi cant statistic differences in the phonological awareness abilities between the study groups. Conclusions: the compensatory lengthening strategy should not be considered an indicator of better performance in specifi c abilities of phonological awareness. The use of spectrography combined with clinical evaluations, such as phonological awareness, could show prominent information about the phonological knowledge of a child, since the diagnosis until the conclusion of a phonological therapy.