ABSTRACT
Purpose:
to compare the perceptual judgment of the speech intelligibility of children with speech sound disorders by speech language pathologists (men x women) and non-professionals (men x women) and to verify the agreement of the perceptual judgment with the results of the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised.
Methods:
this research consisted of two samples: the judged and the judging. The judged sample was composed by 30 children from the Database of a clinical speech therapy, diagnosed with speech sound disorders, ages between 4:7 and 7: 11 years old (20 males and 10 females). The judging sample was composed by six speech pathologists (three males and three females) and six non-professionals (people that did not have any contact with any child), three males and three females.
Results:
the judgment of intelligibility of the nonprofessionals is impaired when comparing with the intelligibility of speech language pathologists, because they have technical background in order to understand the speech of others, better judging the speech of children. Nonprofessionals agree in the same way about the severity of phonological disorder, differently of speech language pathologists, where female speech pathologists judge and agree better in the relationship of intelligibility and gravity of phonological disorder.
Conclusion:
Speech Language Pathologists have greater effectiveness to judge the speech intelligibility of children that have speech sound disorders, female speech pathologists have better insight to judge the severity of speech disorders compared to the nonprofessional group, which demonstrates that more information about speech is needed.
Keywords:
Speech Intelligibility; Speech Disorders; Speech Perception; Speech-Language Pathology; Child