BACKGROUND: the behavioral auditory processing (AP) evaluation allows the investigation of neuroaudiological processes involved in speech fluency processing. AIM: the purpose of this study was to describe the results obtained in the AP evaluation in stutterers, comparing the type of AP disorder with the severity of stuttering. METHOD: 56 subjects, 49 male and 7 female, ranging in age from 4 to 34 years, were referred from the speech-language clinic of UNIFESP to the AP evaluation. All patients were submitted to the following evaluations: audiological, speech and language. Disfluency was classified according to the protocol proposed by Riley (1994) which includes the following stuttering severity levels: very mild, mild, moderate, severe and very severe. Behavioral AP tests were selected and analyzed according to the patient's age and to the proposal of Pereira & Schochat (1997). RESULTS: subjects with ages between 4 to 7 years and between 12 to 34 years presented mostly mild stuttering, subjects between 8 to 11 years presented mostly moderate stuttering. From the total of 56 individuals who were evaluated, 92.85% presented AP disorders. The most common auditory processing disorders were supra-segmental and decoding. No statistical differences were found considering the results of the AP evaluation and the severity of stuttering for none of the age groups. CONCLUSION: the AP evaluation indicated deficits for most of the participants of all age groups, however no correlations were observed with the severity of stuttering.
Stuttering; Auditory Perceptual Disorders; Hearing
