Speech perception and hearing impairment: development of na instrument to evaluate Brazilian Portuguese stops auditory perception

Abstract

The aim of this work was to develop an instrument for auditory perception evaluation, with a specific focus on identifying place and voicing contrasts of Brazilian Portuguese stops by hearing impaired subjects. Therefore a test was elaborated based on software that enables simultaneous presentation of audio and video files, registering the answer for each item. This procedure was applied to70 children without audition complaints. The results showed that this group had no difficulties on performing the test and that the errors that occurred were randomly distributed among the group aged 7 or more. When applied to a group of hearing impaired subjects, with different degrees of loss, the test average results indicated a tendency of more difficulties in perceiving place and voicing contrasts as the degree of loss grows, although individual variance was observed, even considering individual with the same degree of loss. The instrument developed can contribute for the evaluation of auditory perception of place and voicing contrasts among hearing impaired subjects.