Speech perception and orthography in children of elementary school

• Grant number: 15/00742-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date until: April 01, 2015
• End date until: June 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Lourenço Chacon Jurado Filho
• Grantee: Ana Cândida Schier Martins Lopes
• Supervisor: Maria João dos Reis de Freitas
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 13/09981-4 - Speech perception and orthography in children of elementary school, BP.DR

Abstract

In the last years, investigations on children's writing under different theoretical and methodological approaches have been carried out. In this scenario, it should be highlighted the fact that those are investigations that point to possible relationships between writing acquisition and auditory characteristics. Nevertheless, researchers from the Group for Research on Language Studies (GPEL/CNPq), located at FFC/UNESP, have called attention to the importance of Perceptual-auditory aspects which are possibly involved in orthographic fluctuations in children's writing. Therefore, the purpose of the present work - investigating the relationships between the auditory perception and orthography in children's writing - is justified specially by the scarcity of studies focusing, concomitantly, on children's perceptual acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese phonological contrasts and on orthography acquisition. It can also be justified by the contribution that it may bring to the knowledge of that relationship. So, the present investigation will be guided by the following objectives: (1) verifying the perceptual-auditory and the orthographic performances of children concerning the identification of contrasts among the consonants and vowels of Brazilian Portuguese; and (2) investigating to which extend those two performances are related. As methodological aspects, perceptual-auditory performance and spelling in students of both genders, aged between six and ten years and enrolled in classes from 1st to 5th grade of elementary schools, will be analyzed. The data collection of auditory perception will be based on the Assessment Tool in Speech Perception (PERCEFAL), using the software Perceval. The orthographic data collection, differently, will be done through dictation of the same words used in the assessment tool PERCEFAL. For data collection, earphones connected to laptop computer containing software Perceval, version 3.0.5, will be used; a black ballpoint pen and A4 blank paper will be used for collecting written production samples. In order to analyze the results regarding the perceptual-auditory performance, the following criteria will be adopted: perceptual-auditory accuracy (percentage of mistakes, hits and non-responses); response time of mistakes and hits; ability to identify the contrast between i.e., the children's ability to identify the contrasts with more facility or more difficulty. Specifically in the contrast identification analysis, a proposal of confusion matrix will be used to catalogue - quantitatively and qualitatively - the perceptive mistakes made by the children. In relation to the orthographic performance, the phonemic orthography standards will be observed, as well as the presence, or not, of deviant forms in all children's orthographic registry. Later analysis of spelling accuracy (percentage of errors, hits and non-responses) and upon the ability to identify the orthographic contrast, i.e., children's ability to identify the contrasts with more facility or more difficulty, from an orthographic confusion matrix, will be held - the proposal for the present study accomplishment. (AU)