Estudo correlacional entre o desempenho em tarefas lingüísticas e audiológicas de indivíduos afásicos

Abstract

This dissertation presents a correlational study of linguistic tasks in comparison to audiological findings in aphasic subjects, and a pilot study with normal subjects. The study was motivated by the absence of a similar study in the literature. Notwithstanding, its results could be important in the light of speech perception models, which assume independence between language and auditory capacity. In the pilot study, 11 normal subjects were submitted to the tasks of phoneme discrimination, phoneme segmentation, auditory fusion and temporal order with the aim of verifying if the hit results would be close to 100%. Aphasic subjects were submitted to the tasks of oral comprehension, phoneme discrimination and phoneme segmentation, and to a complete auditory assessment comprising impedance audiometry, tonal audiometry using both air and bone conduction, verbal audiometry, evoked acoustic otoemission, BERA, auditory fusion, temporal order, and gap detection in white noise. The sample (n=16) was selected from the patients under treatment at Centro Clínico de Fonoaudiologia / Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, from both sexes and age mean 58,4 years without comprehension deficits. The results showed some significant correlations between phoneme discrimination and the following audiologic findings: mean of speech frequencies (500, 1000 and 2000 Hz) using bone conduction, and absolute latencies in wave III and V in evoked acoustic otoemission. Segmentation task (concerning place of articulation and voicing) was also correlated to absolute latencies in wave III and V in evoked acoustic otoemission. GIN scores were higher than found in normal population (5 ms): mean of 9,4 ms for right ear, and 10,9 ms for left ear. In conclusion, there were significant results relating BERA and phoneme segmentation and discrimination, and these point to the possible role of brain stem to speech perception. On the other hand, the lack of correlation to any other audiologic variable points to a "speech is special" approach.