Native Speakers Of Brazilian Portuguese Research Articles

Grammatical impairment in schizophrenia: An exploratory study of the pronominal and sentential domains.

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a severe mental disorder associated with a variety of linguistic deficits, and recently it has been suggested that these deficits are caused by an underlying impairment in the ability to build complex syntactic structures and complex semantic relations. Aiming at contributing to determining the specific linguistic profile of SZ, we investigated the usage of pronominal subjects and sentence types in two corpora of oral dream and waking reports produced by speakers with SZ and participants without SZ (NSZ), both native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Narratives of 40 adult participants (20 SZ, and 20 NSZ-sample 1), and narratives of 31 teenage participants (11 SZ undergoing first psychotic episode, and 20 NSZ-sample 2) were annotated and statistically analyzed. Overall, narratives of speakers with SZ presented significantly higher rates of matrix sentences, null pronouns-particularly null 3Person referential pronouns-and lower rates of non-anomalous truncated sentences. The high rate of matrix sentences correlated significantly with the total PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of simple sentences and SZ symptoms in general. In contrast, the high rate of null pronouns correlated significantly with positive PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of null pronominal forms and the positive symptoms of SZ. Finally, a cross-group analysis between samples 1 and 2 indicated a higher degree of grammatical impairment in speakers with multiple psychotic episodes. Altogether, the results strengthen the notion that deficits at the pronominal and sentential levels constitute a cross-cultural linguistic marker of SZ.

15-item Roland-Morris disability questionnaire for general pain (RMDQ-g): Structural validity and criterion validity on Brazilian patients with chronic pain

BackgroundRoland-Morris Disability Questionnaire for general pain (RMDQ-g) is an instrument adapted to assess disability in patients with pain in any region of the body. ObjectiveTo perform the structural and criterion validity of the RMDQ-g in Brazilian patients with chronic pain. DesignA cross-sectional study. MethodsWe included native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, of both sexes, aged ≥18 years, with pain for at least 3 months in any region of the body. Participants eligible for the study responded to an online form containing personal and clinical data, and assessment instruments. We used the confirmatory factor analysis and considered the following fit indices: chi-square/degree of freedom (DF), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In the comparison between models, we considered the structure with the lowest values of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and sample-size adjusted Bayesian information criterion (SABIC). We assessed criterion validity via Spearman's correlation coefficient (rho) to correlate the long and short versions. ResultsThe study consisted of 297 participants with chronic pain. The main sites of pain were the lumbar region (40.7%), thoracic (21.5%), and neck (19.5%). Mean pain intensity was greater than 5 points. The 24-item long version and the 15-item short version had adequate fit indices (chi-square/DF ≤ 1.77, CFI ≥0.97, TLI ≥0.96, and RMSEA ≤0.05). However, when comparing structures, the short version was the most appropriate because it had the lowest values of AIC (2562.05) and SABIC (2577.72). Criterion validity was acceptable (rho = 0.94) and internal consistency as well (Cronbach's alpha = 0.87). ConclusionThe structural validity and criterion validity of the RMDQ-g with one domain and 15 items is the most appropriate version and should be considered in the clinical environment and in research for measuring disability in patients with chronic pain in any region of the body.

The Maze Task Mobile: Using a Psycholinguistic Experimental Technique as a Pedagogical Tool for Language Learning

This study presents a mobile application of the maze task as a complementary activity for second language learning. The application facilitates conducting linguistic training sessions with the maze task for both pedagogical and experimental purposes. We designed the Maze Task Mobile, used it in English classes with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, and analyzed student perceptions through an attitude survey. Besides presenting the application in detail, we discuss the results from the survey and from participants’ accuracy in the task highlighting the benefits of this first mobile version of the maze task as well as improvements needed for future development.

Differences between stereotypical gender and definitional gender in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese

Together with Alves (2019), this paper is part of a research work dedicated to investigating the role of gender cues in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese. The main aim is to determine whether Principle B structural constraints work as an initial filter in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese, or whether gender cues play a major role at early processing phases since this language has visible redundant morphological markings. It is also examined whether antecedent candidates carrying different gender cues have different weights in memory. In the present work, a comparison between antecedent candidates carrying stereotypical gender and definitional gender was provided. The results of two eye-tracking experiments conducted with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese showed that gender morphological cues play a role at the very beginning of pronoun resolution processing, and only at a later processing phase, structural constraints of Principle B seemed to help the parser to select the correct antecedent. Like the previous work, the results indicated Principle B structural constraints do not work as an initial filter blocking structurally unacceptable candidates in Brazilian Portuguese; on the contrary, all candidates seemed to be taken into account despite of violating Principle B structural constraints. Similarly to the previous work, masculine antecedent candidates were preferable to be retrieved by memory in comparison to feminine candidates. Moreover, the results indicated that candidates with definitional gender rather than stereotypical gender are preferable to be retrieved by memory since the former is lexically specified, while the latter relies on probabilities based on world knowledge inferences.

Translation and cross-cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of two brief screening tools for at-risk psychosis youth: the Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ-16) and the PRIME-Screen.

Prodromal characteristics of psychosis have been described for more than a century. Over the last three decades, a variety of studies have proposed methods to prospectively identify individuals (and youth in particular) who are at high risk of developing a psychotic disorder. These studies have validated various screening instruments and made them available in several languages. Here, we describe the translation into Brazilian Portuguese and cross-cultural adaptation of two such screening tools - the Prodromal Questionnaire-16 (PQ-16) and the Prevention through Risk Identification, Management, and Education (PRIME)-Screen. Two bilingual native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese translated the questionnaires from English. A native English speaker then performed back-translations into English. These back-translated versions were submitted to the original authors. They provided feedback and later approved the final versions. After translation and cross-cultural adaptation, no items needed to be changed in the adapted PQ-16 and four items were revised in the PRIME-Screen. After the peer-review process, we included two suggestions in the PQ-16 to facilitate use of the tool in our cultural and social contexts. The PRIME-Screen did not need further changes. These new instruments can help screen Brazilian Portuguese-speaking patients who are at risk of psychosis in primary care.

Investigation of the Association Between History of Learning Disabilities and Primary Progressive Aphasia in Brazilian Portuguese Speakers.

Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a neurological syndrome characterized by impaired language due to neurodegeneration. It is subdivided into three variants: semantic, agrammatic or nonfluent, and logopenic. Pieces of evidence have suggested that learning disabilities in childhood, such as dyslexia, might be susceptibility factors in the occurrence of PPA in adulthood. The objective of this study was to verify the existence of the relationship between PPA and the history of learning disabilities of patients and their children, compared to a control group of individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). A questionnaire was applied to investigate the presence of indicators of learning disabilities and difficulties in individuals with PPA and AD and their children. Twenty subjects with PPA and 16 with AD participated in the study. Our findings are presented and discussed in light of the current scientific evidence and the social, educational, and economic Brazilian scenario. Despite the challenges of doing research with individuals with PPA in Brazil, we present the first evidence about the investigation of association between the history of learning disabilities and difficulties and PPA in native Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

Verbal working memory assessment in Russian-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals

In Brazil, the learning of a second language (L2) by native Brazilian Portuguese speakers has been extensively explored, but studies on language processing and language interaction among bilinguals are quite recent. The late bilingualism of the first-generation immigrants has been studied mainly from the perspective of their difficulties in learning Brazilian Portuguese. Brazil has numerous communities of heritage speakers of many languages such as Japanese, German, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian. However, the number of studies that focus on the bilingual speech of heritage speakers in Brazil is also quite limited. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the working memory in Russian-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals as a function of the language and type of bilingualism. For this purpose, 49 first-generation Russophone immigrants and 28 older Russian heritage speakers, all residing in Brazil, were tested in Russian and Portuguese using a Month-Ordering task. We found that the working memory scores of the first-generation Russophone immigrants were not statistically different between both languages, but the median working memory score of the older Russian heritage speakers in Russian was 1.5-fold lower than in Portuguese. As next steps, we plan to verify the relation between the working memory capacity and narrative production abilities of the older Russian heritage-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals in their heritage and societal languages.

AudBility: Effectiveness of an online central auditory processing screening program.

To contribute to the validation of AudBility, an online central auditory processing screening program, considering the tasks for age between 6 and 8 years-old, from the investigation of sensitivity and specificity, as well as to suggest a minimum central auditory processing (CAP) screening protocol in this age group. In the first stage of the study, 154 schoolchildren were screened. Children were aged between 6 and 8 years old, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The auditory tasks of AudBility analyzed in this study were: sound localization (SL), auditory closure (AC), figure-ground (FG), dichotic digits-binaural integration (DD), temporal resolution (TR) and temporal frequency ordering (TO-F). In the second stage, 112 children attended to CAP assessment in the institution's laboratory. The calculation of efficacy (sensitivity/specificity) was obtained through the construction of the ROC curve for the tests with more than five children altered in the diagnosis. For the 6-7-year-old age group the accuracy values were: AC (76.9%); FG (61.6%); DD 78.8% for the right ear and 84.4% for the left ear in females and 63.2% for the left ear in males; TR (77.1%) and TO-F (74.4% for the right ear and 82.4% for the left ear). For the 8-year-old age group the values were: FF (76.5%); DD (71.7% for the left ear for females and 77% for the right ear for males); TR (56.5%) and TO-F (54.1% for the right ear and 70% for the left ear). AudBility showed variations in sensitivity and specificity values between the auditory tasks and age groups, with better effectiveness in schoolchildren between the ages of 6 and 7 than eight-year-olds, except for the FG task. For screening purposes, the application of the protocol involving five tasks for the 6 to 7-year-olds group and with four tasks for the 8-year-olds group is suggested.

Developmental Sequences in Second Language Phonology: Effects of Instruction on the Acquisition of Foreign sC Onsets

This study investigates the effects of three types of instruction on the acquisition of foreign /s/-initial onset clusters (/sl/, /sn/, and /st/-sC clusters), a process characterized by a developmental sequence in which /sl/ is acquired before /sn/ and /st/. 118 native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a 4-week language course to learn a set of vocabulary and associated pronunciation of Taki, a self-constructed miniature linguistic system. The participants were divided into three groups, each corresponding to one of the hypotheses that characterize three types of explicit second language instruction: Teachability, Projection of Markedness (Projection), and a combination of the two (Mixed). A mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis of the participants’ production of sC clusters revealed that, in one of the tasks employed (read aloud), the group that focused exclusively on the more marked/st/ (Projection Group) had the best overall performance in the acquisition of the three clusters: this group was able to generalize their knowledge to the sC clusters they were not taught. In general, the results support Zobl’s Projection Model of Markedness for explaining the phonological development of syllable structure, wherein the instructional effect of a focus on the most marked /st/ projects to knowledge of the less marked structures.

Less is More: Five-item Neck Disability Index to Assess Chronic Neck Pain Patients in Brazil

Study Design.Cross-sectional study.Objective.The aim of this study was to assess the structural validity of the Brazilian version of the Neck Disability Index (NDI) in patients with chronic neck pain.Summary of Background Data.NDI is widely used in clinical and scientific contexts, although its structure has not been evaluated in the Brazilian version.Methods.Native Brazilian Portuguese speakers, aged ≥18 years, with neck pain complaint of at least 3 months, and minimal pain rating of 3 points at rest or during neck movements were included. Exploratory factorial analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) were used. In EFA, the adequacy of the model was assessed using Bartlett test of sphericity and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test. In CFA, the goodness-of-fit was assessed by the indices: root mean square error of approximation with 90% of confidence interval, comparative fit index, Tucker-Lewis Index, standardized root mean square residual, and χ2/degree of freedom. Akaike information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC) were considered to compare the models.Results.Two hundred fifty-four participants with chronic neck pain were included. The NDI model with one domain and five items presented the most adequate goodness-of-fit indexes and the lowest values of AIC and BIC, when compared with models with one domain and 10, eight, or seven items, and with the model with two domains and 10 items.Conclusion.In the Brazilian context, the NDI version with one domain and five items (personal care, concentration, work, driving, and recreation) presents the best structure according to the factorial analysis.Level of Evidence:5

RUSSIAN ACCENT IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE AFFECTS THE PERCEPTION OF VOICE PLEASANTNESS BY BRAZILIANS

The field of foreign accents in Brazilian Portuguese is very poorly explored mainly in relation to perceptual impressions caused on listeners by foreign accents. The objective of this paper is to conduct a perceptual experiment to analyze the perception of voice pleasantness in relation to degrees of foreign accent. Our focus is on Russian accented Brazilian Portuguese. Despite the representativeness of the Russian community in Brazil, there are hardly any studies on Russian accented speech. T o evaluate the perception of voice pleasantness in relation to the Russian accented speech, we have selected, from our database, speech samples in Brazilian Portuguese from 12 native Russian speakers and six Brazilians, all of them residing in São Paulo. The speech samples were incorporated into an online questionnaire. The analysis of the 129 answers given by the native Brazilian Portuguese speakers showed a strong negative correlation between the degree of Russian accent in Brazilian Portuguese and the degree of voice pleasantness. Experience of interaction with foreigners or knowledge of foreign languages, including Russian, did not influence the result. We conclude that higher degrees of Russian accented speech in Brazilian Portuguese affect the perception of speakers´ characteristics by Brazilians in a negative way.

Qualitative and quantitative aspects of the F-A-S fluency test in people with aphasia.

ABSTRACT.Verbal fluency tests are widely used in neuropsychological assessment. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the performance of aphasic individuals on the phonemic verbal fluency (PVF) test can contribute to a better understanding of cognitive changes in this group of patients.Objective:This study aimed to analyze clustering and switching measures of PVF in people with aphasia and investigate the relationship between the use of these strategies, the quantitative performance on the test, and the performance on executive functions.Methods:This is a cross-sectional study of 15 people with aphasia, right-handed, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, aged 19 to 92 years. They were submitted to the F-A-S test and the Clock Drawing Test (CDT). The following measures were obtained in the F-A-S test: total score, number of clusters, mean cluster size, and number of switches. Spearman's test was used to analyze correlation.Results:We found a positive correlation among all F-A-S test scores, ranging from p=0.61 (p<0.001) to p=0.91 (p<0.001). No correlation was identified between these measures and CDT performance (p≤0.31; p≥0.260).Conclusions:The quantitative and qualitative analysis of F-A-S in people with aphasia, even those with different linguistic manifestations, showed that these individuals presented lower scores and that the number of total words and the number of switches were strongly correlated. We found no correlation between executive function, assessed by the CDT, and switching performance on the F-A-S test.

Structural validity of the Brazilian version of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index among patients with knee osteoarthritis.

The original structure of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) has been contested in several languages. To assess the structural validity of the Brazilian version of WOMAC among patients with knee osteoarthritis. Structural validity study conducted at physiotherapy clinics and primary healthcare units. The study included males and females aged 40 to 80 years who were all native Brazilian Portuguese speakers, with knee pain in the previous six months and a diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis. We used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with implementation of a polychoric matrix and the robust diagonally weighted least squares (RDWLS) extraction method. The adequacy of the model was assessed using the following fit indices: root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) and chi-square/degree of freedom (DF). 203 patients with knee osteoarthritis were included. The model proposed in this study with two factors, i.e. "pain" (items 1, 2, 3 and 4) and "physical function" (items 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 and 22), showed adequate fit indices in CFA: chi-square/DF = 1.30; CFI = 0.976; TLI = 0.970; RMSEA = 0.039; and SRMR = 0.070. The factorial loads ranged from 0.68 to 0.76 for the "pain" domain and 0.44 to 0.62 for the "physical function" domain. The Brazilian version of WOMAC with two domains, i.e. "pain" (four items) and "physical function" (eight items), presents the best structure.

Self-Estimated Functional Inability because of Pain questionnaire for Brazilian workers with musculoskeletal pain: face and content validity

ABSTRACT Our study aimed to perform the face and content validity of Self-Estimated Functional Inability because of Pain (SEFIP) for workers, here called the SEFIP-work questionnaire. This is a questionnaire validity study. Our group previously translated and adapted the original version of the SEFIP, which was developed to investigate musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction to be applied to dancers (SEFIP-dance). However, due to the broad scope of the SEFIP-dance, we made changes and adaptations in the Brazilian Portuguese version of the SEFIP-dance to allow its use in workers. Therefore, face and content validity were performed for the development of the SEFIP-work based on opinions of committee of occupational disease and rehabilitation experts. After face and content validity, this SEFIP-work version was applied to 30 working individuals with musculoskeletal pain. The participants were native Brazilian Portuguese speakers aged 18 years and older. Thus, three changes were made to the questionnaire. All participants understood the SEFIP-work items and alternatives. The average total SEFIP-work score was 6.59 (SD=3.66), with the item “parte inferior das costas” (lower back) being the most marked (n=28; 93.33%), with an average score of 1.18 (SD=0.73). In conclusion, the Brazilian Portuguese version of SEFIP-work presents an acceptable level of understanding by workers in the investigation of musculoskeletal pain or discomfort.

M190. USE OF NULL PRONOUNS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

BackgroundSchizophrenic speech show consistent disturbances in referentiality, which, from a communicative standpoint, manifest as incoherent speech. Referential failures are especially detected in the usage of pronouns. Literature reports that schizophrenics either use more pronouns without clear reference or more semantically rich anaphors than pronouns. Additionally, it is reported that psychosis language in the context of schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder and bipolar disorder present more first-person pronouns; within individuals at high genetic risk of schizophrenia those who subsequently developed schizophrenia produced significantly more second-person pronouns than those who did not manifest the illness; and individuals with diagnosis of primary psychotic disorder increased their usage of pronouns, including first-person and second-person pronouns during the period prior to a relapse hospitalization. The abnormalities observed in the use pronouns suggest that schizophrenic patients have semantic-pragmatic issues.There are not many experimental studies devoted to pronouns in schizophrenia, and, according to our current knowledge, none of the existent ones focuses on pronouns without phonological content (null pronouns). In order to fulfill this gap, we present here an investigation of null pronouns in dream narratives produced by Brazilian schizophrenia patients.MethodsDream narratives from 20 schizophrenics and 20 control subjects, all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, were screened for null subject pronouns. Participants were prompt to talk by the command: “please report a recent dream”. Each narrative sample was then transcribed, and the occurrence of subject null pronouns were annotated, together with its morphosyntactic features (person & number) and referential status (referential vs. non-referential/expletives). The number of overt and null (with and without phonological content respectively) pronouns in subject position were converted into ratios by dividing the number of occurrences of each pronoun type (overt and null) by the total number of words in the narrative. Next, overt and null pronouns were compared within and between groups.ResultsT-test comparison showed that the schizophrenia group produced significantly more null pronouns than control group (t(25.126) = 3.919; p = .001); and, that null pronouns were significantly more produced than overt pronouns in the schizophrenia group (t(38) = 3.242; p = .002). Multiple regression showed that total of null pronouns differentiate schizophrenia from control group (F(1,38) = 15.357, p = .001, R2 = .288). In addition, analysis of null pronoun differences between groups based on morphosyntactic features and referential status, showed that schizophrenics used significantly more null pronouns with third-person singular features (t(27.523) =2.699; p =.012) and non-referential pronouns (expletives) (t(23.608) = 2.808; p = 0,010) than control group.DiscussionA closer look at third-person null pronouns in the schizophrenic narratives showed that these pronouns are quite often loose in terms of reference: of the total occurrences of third-person null pronouns in schizophrenia approximately 30% are without clear referent. In accordance, null expletives, which are empty of reference, are overused to the point of explaining group differences. This corroborates that schizophrenic speech has a reduced semantic-pragmatic load, with a general difficulty in using pronouns within a contextually framed discourse.

Acoustically controlled auditory training in children with speech disfluency: a case report

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to verify the effect of the acoustically controlled auditory training on the speech fluency of children diagnosed with developmental stuttering. Two patients were submitted to speech fluency evaluation, basic audiological assessment, and central auditory processing assessment, before and after the intervention with the digital platform. Two male individuals (P1 and P2) participated in the research. They were respectively 8 and 9 years old, both were right-handed, native Brazilian Portuguese speakers, diagnosed with developmental stuttering, P1 presenting a moderate, and P2, a mild-to-moderate degree. There was an improvement in some auditory skills. However, there was no improvement in the speech fluency pattern in neither of the cases studied.

Processamento da morfologia flexional verbal do português brasileiro: um estudo com rastreamento ocular

O processamento da morfologia flexional verbal tem sido alvo de um amplo debate em psicolinguística. Teorias de mecanismo dual (Pinker 1998; Ullmanet al.1997) sugerem modelos de processamento nos quais formas regulares são processadas via regra computacional, enquanto formas irregulares são recuperadas na memória. Em contrapartida, teorias de mecanismo unitário (Rumelhart &amp; Mcclelland 1986; Stockall &amp; Marantz 2006) afirmam que tanto formas regulares quanto irregulares podem ser processadas via mecanismo conexionista ou decomposicional. Grande parte das evidências acumuladas até o momento provém do passado simples em inglês (Pinker 1998; Rumelhart &amp; Mcclelland 1986; Stockall &amp; Marantz 2006; Ullmanet al. 1997). Ao contrário do inglês, o português possui um complexo sistema morfológico verbal. Em vista disso, um experimento psicolinguístico utilizando o método de leitura auto monitorada associada com registro de movimento ocular foi conduzido a fim de investigar se verbos regulares que pertencem a diferentes classes e tempos verbais são processados da por um mecanismo unitário ou dual. Participaram desse experimento cento e oito falantes nativos do português brasileiro. Os resultados sugerem que, no processamento das formas verbais flexionadas, propriedades como classe e tempo verbal, bem como elementos sintáticos que fazem parte da sentença na qual o verbo está inserido, desempenham um papel no processamento verbal.

As diferenças entre gênero gramatical e gênero semântico na recuperação de antecedentes pronominais em Português Brasileiro

A correferência é uma dependência sintática em que pronomes são ligados a referentes mencionados previamente. O objetivo deste trabalho é fornecer mais informações sobre como os antecedentes pronominais são recuperados na memória, e, mais precisamente, esclarecer o papel das pistas de gênero na recuperação de antecedentes pronominais em português brasileiro, dado que seus falantes estão costumados a depender das pistas de concordância para processar a língua, uma vez que esta possui morfologia visível. Os resultados de dois experimentos de rastreamento ocular realizados com falantes nativos de português brasileiro demonstraram que tanto as restrições estruturais quanto as pistas morfológicas de gênero são igualmente importantes na recuperação dos antecedentes na memória nos estágios iniciais do processamento da correferência. Isto é evidência a favor de que as restrições estruturais não funcionam como um filtro inicial, bloqueando as influências de candidatos a antecedentes estruturalmente inaceitáveis. Além disso, os resultados indicaram que o gênero semântico e o gênero masculino parecem ter um peso maior na memória do que o gênero gramatical e o gênero feminino, já que os candidatos a antecedentes inaceitáveis estruturalmente que carregavam os primeiros tipos de gênero causaram mais efeitos de interferência.

Representação fonológica e percepção de fala: O papel da pausa

Investigamos a percepção de pausas em fronteiras de frase entonacional (IP) no Português Brasileiro (PB) e abordamos a relação entre produção e percepção da fala. Vinte sujeitos adultos, falantes nativos do PB, sem distúrbios de linguagem e sem queixas auditivas, participaram de um teste experimental de identificação de pausa. Usamos estímulos auditivos nos quais a fronteira IP foi marcada por uma combinação de pausa e variação de altura ou apenas variação de altura. Os resultados são os seguintes: (i) quando os estímulos consistiam em uma combinação de pausa com variação de altura no limite IP, as pausas foram identificadas significativamente (ii) quando os estímulos não tinham variação de altura nos limites IP, as pausas não foram identificadas significativamente, (iii) quando somente ocorreu variação de altura, sem produção de silêncio, foram identificadas pausas na fronteira testada. Esses resultados corroboram o argumento de que a percepção de fala não depende inteiramente da recuperação de um padrão acústico e evidencia a importância da representação fonológica para a percepção e organização do estímulo auditivo percebido. Com base nos resultados, argumentamos que a percepção de pausa resultaria da ilusão perceptiva marcada pela combinação de diferentes tipos de informações linguísticas, em nível fonético-acústico e representacional.

Aspectos entoacionais no desenvolvimento da fala infantil da variedade mineira do PB

Neste trabalho, analisamos o padrão entoacional da fala de 3 crianças mineiras, com idades entre 5:9 e 6:8 anos, naturais de Juiz de Fora, falantes de Português Brasileiro (PB), a partir de questionários que simulavam situações conversacionais, nos moldes metodológicos de Frota et al. (2015). O objetivo foi investigar os contornos prosódicos – padrão entoacional, proeminência e ritmo – utilizados por elas e compará-los aos padrões entoacionais de falantes adultos da variedade mineira do PB, descritos no Interactive Atlas of Romance Intonation (PRIETO et al., 2010-2014). Os resultados das análises sugerem que as crianças adquirem os padrões entoacionais de forma gradativa, assim como adquirem os segmentos, as palavras e as estruturas sintáticas da língua.