Influencia del sexo y el nivel educativo en la fluidez del habla en personas adultas

The aim of the study was to verify the influence of gender and educational status on fluent adults' speech fluency. The sample comprised 136 fluent adult Brazilian Portuguese speakers of both genders, whose ages ranged between 18 and < 60, distributed in the following groups, according to the educational status: elementary school, high school and higher education. A 200-fluent-syllable sample, elicited by visual stimulus was collected from each subject. The speech samples were analyzed considering the variables proposed in the Speech Fluency Profile, namely, typology of disruptions (stuttering-like disfluencies and other disfluencies), speech rate (in words/syllables per minute) and frequency of disruptions (percentage of speech discontinuity). Considering the variables analyzed, a lack of statistically significant difference between genders was found. Concerning the influence of educational status, a statistically significant difference in occurrence of interjections, revisions and prolongations was observed. Participants with higher education produced less interjections and revisions than participants with elementary school, but more prolongations than those with high school. Gender and educational status may not be regarded as decisive factors in fluent adults' speech fluency. It seems that the educational status determines the presence of difficulties in leading with semantic-lexical and syntactical structures, as well as the strategies used for overcoming these difficulties.