فاطمه فکار قراملکی

Grammar is a key element of language knowledge and a factor in predicting language learning and success. Early diagnosis of grammatical errors in children before entering school is very important. So far, no tool has been designed to evaluate the Azerbaijani language grammar comprehension in Iran. The present study aims to design the Azerbaijani language grammar comprehension test for Iranian children aged 4-6 along and assess its validity.

This is a mixed-method (qualitative-quantitative) study. After searching in various databases and reviewing available articles, 42 grammatical structures of the Azerbaijani language were extracted, of which 8 were removed after preliminary examination by experts. Then, 204 items were formulated for the remaining 34 grammatical structures. To determine the content validity, the test was sent to 11 experts in the field of Azerbaijani language grammar to evaluate the items. According to their opinions, two more suitable items were selected from among four items for each grammatical structure and included in the initial version for the pilot study. The initial test version was conducted on 30 children aged 4-6 years with normal language development.

After calculating the content validity ratio (CVR), two grammatical structures were removed, and 32 structures with 128 items having CVR≥0.59 remained. After calculating the content validity index (CVI), the items with CVI≥0.79 were selected. The initial version had 32 grammatical structures and 64 items. None of the items were removed in the pilot phase, and only 10 items were modified. The CVR and CVI of the test were 0.91 and 0.87, respectively, indicating good content validity.

The Azerbaijani language grammar comprehension test has good content and face validity and can be used to evaluate the grammar comprehension of children with Azerbaijani language aged 4-6 years.

Bilingual children are sometimes over-identified with language impairment and sometimes their language impairment under-identified that in either case, proper intervention is not possible. Accurate measurement of bilingual child language development involves assessing both of their languages. The purpose of this study was to identify a set of measures that would discriminate language impairment in bilingual Turkish-Persian children aged 5 to 7 years in Tehran.

In this descriptive-analytical study, the language sample of 24 bilingual children with no language impairment and 8 bilingual children with language impairment was analyzed according to the linguistic measures of mean length of Terminable-unit, number of total words, number of different words, and number of grammatical errors per Terminable-unit. Children without language impairment were selected from kindergartens and schools by multi-stage cluster sampling method. Language-impaired children were selected by the Speech-Language Pathologist with at least three years of bilingual speech and language pathology services from Tehran-based speech therapy clinics in an accessible manner. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of nonverbal intelligence, age of exposure and duration of exposure to Persian. Parents responded to questions about their perceptions of their children’s speech and language skills and family history of speech and language problems.

Diagnostic analysis indicated that 3 measures discriminated the groups of children with sensitivity 87.5%: the Parent Report Questionnaire, number of total words, and mean length of T-unit.

According to the results, Indicators of parental reports and language criteria in identifying the language damage of Turkish-Persian bilingual children can be of diagnostic use for speech and language pathologists.

One of the important areas of language is pragmatics, which describes the correct use of language for social interaction. Since tests are tools for quantitation of speech and language abilities, they are needed in order to assess, screen, describe, diagnose, and treat various aspects of language. The aim of this study was to review the existing tests in the area of language pragmatics and collect data about their subtests, scoring, administration, age range, and finally their application in clinical and research contexts in children.

In order to review the common tests of language pragmatics, an electronic search through Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Medline, Google Scholar, and Ovid databases was done between the years 2000 to 2020. The keywords were “Pragmatics”, “Language”, “Means”, “Tests”, “Tools”, “Diagnosis”, “Measurement”, and “Evaluation”. The inclusion criteria were access to the full text of the article, and the article language (either English or Persian).

In this study, 18 tests and a checklist were reterived from 25 studies for further study. Among them, only four tests and one checklist were for sole assessment of pragmatics and 14 other tests were for assesing all aspects of language.

Some tests have recently been used more commonly due to the specialization of their subtests. Reviewing language pragmatics tests shows that the Test of Pragmatic Language-Second Edition (TOPL-2) was the most acceptable test due to the assessment of comprehension-expression areas, standardization for healthy children or children with disorders, translation into several languages, and high psychometric characteristics; however, the use of multiple tests is recommended for a comprehensive and integrated assessment.

Cerebral palsy leads to many physical and functional limitations in the daily living of the children, which results in the child becoming dependent on parents and especially the mother. For this reason, mothers of these children spend a lot of time caring for their children. According to the evidence, mothers of these children experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression compared with mothers of typically developing children. This amount of stress may reduce quality of life in these mothers. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of occupational performance coaching as one of the interventions in order to improve mental health in mothers of children with cerebral palsy.

In the current study with pretest-posttest design and a control group, 30 mothers of children with cerebral palsy wererandomly assigned to intervention or control groups. The short form of Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), COPM questionnaire, Gross Motor Function Classification Scale (GMFCS), and SPARCLE Form were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using independent t-test and Mann-Whitney test in SPSS, version 22.

The results of data analysis showed that after performing occupational performance coaching, mothers had significantly lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in the post-test scores as compared with their pre-test scores.

According to our results, ooccupational performance coaching can be used as an effective intervention to improve the mental health in mothers of children with cerebral palsy and to reduce their level of stress, anxiety, and depression along with other approaches.

Global aphasia due to extensive lesions in cortical, subcortical, and white matter of the left hemisphere is a severe acquired language disorder which disrupts all aspects of aural and written language. In the global aphasia, individual’s interaction and his social community is generally affected and he needs ongoing rehabilitation, especially speech therapy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the common speech therapy methods for global aphasia and dissuss them based on exsiting evidence to introduce the most effective treatment.

An electronic search in Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Medline, SID, Google Scholar, Ovid, and Magiran databases for reviewing the common speech therapy methods was performed to obtain relevant articles published from 1980 to 2020. The keywords used included “Global aphasia”, “Treatment methods”, “Intervention”, “Speech therapy”, “Communication”, and “Therapy”.

Results: 

Among 19 related articles, 9 speech therapy methods have been reviewed to improve communication, expression, and comperhensive language in global aphasia. The results showed that some of them were effective and some were ineffective.

The review suggests that alternative nonverbal, augmentative, and complementary communication methods in the people with global aphasia will produce better results and techniques such as remnant books, the Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), and SIPARI methods have been more effective than other methods.

Stuttering is a multifactorial disorder. So far, numerous findings have been reported regarding various deficits in auditory processing components in the people who stutter. Despite studies on correlation of auditory processing deficits and stuttering, this assumption has not been proven yet. The purpose of the present study was to investigate and collect the results of studies regarding the auditory processing deficits in the people who stutter.

This study was a narrative review to collect research on auditory processing deficits in people who stutter. ISI, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, and PsycINFO databases were searched to reterive English articles that were published from 1995 to 2020. For studies conducted in Iran in Persian, SID and Magiran databases were searched. “Stuttering”, “auditory feedback processing”, “neurophysiology”, and “brain maturity” were the keywords of interest.

In the first stage, 211 articles were found. Finally, after reviewing the inclusion criteria, 86 articles in English and Persian were included. In addition to reviewing articles concerning the existence of auditory processing deficits, the present study emphasized that auditory processing problems in the people who stutter altered the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment approaches.

Although there is no evidence of anatomical abnormalities in the auditory system of people who stutter, numerous studies have reported unstable evidence of central impairments in their auditory processing. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies showed involvement of the central and peripheral areas of auditory processing.</div>

One of the therapeutic approaches that improves speech intelligibility is core vocabulary approach. The core vocabulary intervention with the purpose of producing consistent words has been appropriate in functional speech sound disorders and in this disorder, the child articulates the same lexical items as inconsistently in the absence of speech apraxia. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of the core vocabulary approach on speech intelligibility of a child with inconsistent phonological disorder.

The patient was a four-year-old boy who was given birth after a term pregnancy and via vaginal delivery. The parents referred to the Speech Therapy Clinic complaining about the child’s speech unintelligibility.

According to Clinical Problem Solving Model for speech and language pathologist, assessment data were analyzed to address seven case management questions regarding the need for intervention, service delivery, differential diagnosis, intervention goals, and generalization of therapeutic gains, discharge criteria, and evaluation of efficacy. After appropriate assessments, he was diagnosed as having inconsistent phonological disorder from articulation disorder category that required intervention. The present study reports on the clinical observations, inconsistent phonological disorder diagnosis process, the nature and protocol of core vocabulary approach, and the progress of the patient's speech and language over the course of treatment.

According to the results and assessment data, the core vocabulary approach was chosen as the most appropriate and frequent therapy technique in inconsistent phonological disorders. The obtained results, similar to the previous studies, showed that the core vocabulary approach is effective in enhancing the consistent production and other speech and language skills.  To ensure confidence in the effectiveness of core vocabulary approach, further studies are necessary on more sample and in other languages.

Speech prosody is one of the important communication components that describes the paraliguistic features of speech. The tests are suitable tools for quantifying speech and language skills, and of necessary needs for evaluation, screening, describing, diagnosis, and treatment of various aspects. The purpose of present study was to review existing tests in speech prosody recognition, as well as their subtests, implementation and scorings, and ultimately their application in clinical and research fields of children and adults.

 An electronic search for reviewing common speech prosody tests was performed in Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Medline, Scientific Information Database (SID), Google Scholar, Ovid, and Magiran databases to obtain relevant articles published from 1981 to 2019. The keywords used included “Prosody”, “Assessment”, “Test”, “Tool”, “Evaluation”, “Diagnosis”, “Instrument”, and “Measurement”. The articles obtained using the inclusion criteria were studied following as access to the full text of the article and the English or Persian language. From 15 articles found, 8 tests that were adhered to the inclusion criteria were selected for consideration.Results</strong>: 8 speech prosody tests were evaluated which included 5 perceptual tests, 2 expressive tests, and 1 perceptual expressive test. The oldest test was made in 1981, and the latest in 2012.

 The literature review shows that some tests have been used more often in recent years due to the specialized expertise of the subtests. A review of speech tests suggests that the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) test is more prestigious due to the assessment of perceptual and expression areas, standardization for normal and disabled children, translation into several languages, and high psychometric properties.