leila ghasisin

Context: 

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurological condition characterized by the gradual and progressive deterioration of language abilities, typically occurring before the age of 65. Naming impairments are a primary and consistent issue in PPA. In light of the absence of effective pharmacological treatments, numerous studies over the past few decades have explored the efficacy of language therapy and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in reducing the functional impacts of word-finding difficulties in everyday life.

This study aimed to identify the language therapy methods and tDCS techniques used to address naming impairments in PPA. Data Sources: The research involved searching the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, and ProQuest databases using keywords relevant to studies conducted from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2022. This review focused on case reports, case series, cross-sectional, cohort, and case-control studies (observational studies) published in English, following the PICO criteria. Data Extraction: The initial search yielded 349 articles.

After a thorough review, 43 studies were selected for inclusion in this research. Among these, 27 studies focused on language therapy methods, three studies examined tDCS, and 13 articles investigated a combination of language therapy methods and tDCS. The JBR guidelines were adhered to throughout the review process.

The findings from these studies indicate that language therapy methods, tDCS, and their combination are effective in treating naming deficiencies in patients with primary progressive aphasia.

The purpose of this study was to prepare the initial version of the dysarthria test in Farsi-speaking adults so that it can be used to diagnose a person with dysarthria.

7 subtests were provided, including reflex, respiration, lips, jaw, palate, laryngeal, and tongue, that covered the anatomy and function of speech articulators like another test. The subtest content validity was calculated according to the comments of 10 SLPs. The developed test assessed two hundred normal adults who speak Persian.

Based on the opinion of speech and language pathologists and CVR calculation, the present test has face and content validity. Means and standard deviations were presented in two age groups. Two age groups had significant differences in reflexes (drinking water and eating biscuits) and larynx.

In this study, a test was prepared that can currently be used to determine whether people have dysarthria or not.

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that can affect all representations of language (comprehension, expression, reading, and writing). This disorder is a communication disability that has a long-term effect on various aspects of the life of people with aphasia and their families. The most common cause of aphasia is stroke. The prevalence of this disorder is increasing in Iran. The evidence shows that the factors affecting the provision of speech therapy services to people with aphasia are different in various countries. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the barriers and facilitators of receiving speech therapy services from the perspective of the families of these people in Iran.

The study was conducted qualitatively with a content analysis approach. In this study, individual, semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were conducted with 12 families of people with aphasia. Interviews were conducted by voice calls through WhatsApp or phone calls. Data analysis was done by Burnard’s approach. The duration of interviews with families was 25 minutes on average.

Barriers to receiving speech therapy services from the perspective of families of people with aphasia were divided into five categories and twelve subcategories, and facilitators of receiving services were divided into five categories and thirteen subcategories. There was an overlap between the identified barriers and facilitators, so the titles of the categories were the same and included: factors affecting clients’ attendance in speech therapy sessions, factors related to the patient, factors related to the place of treatment, factors related to the family, and factors related to speech therapist. All the participants pointed out a barrier and a facilitator related to the category of factors affecting clients’ attendance in speech therapy sessions. Also, all of them found a barrier related to the patient and a facilitator related to the family to be effective in receiving speech therapy services.

By examining the factors extracted from the interviewees, it is possible to make the necessary plans to reduce the barriers and strengthen facilitators with the help of people who have responsibilities in this field. Most of the participants considered the high severity of the impairment a barrier to receiving treatment. All of them agreed that the existence of a source to inform about speech therapy services has facilitated receiving these services. By considering the barriers and facilitators, people with aphasia and their families can receive more appropriate treatment according to their conditions and their quality of life will increase.

One of the common symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is swallowing and speech paralysis, which has a significant impact on the quality of life of affected people. Paralytic speech often appears from the very beginning of the disease, and with the progress of the disease, it destroys the possibility of communicating through speech. On the other hand, all the muscles of the tongue, lips, palate, jaw, pharynx, larynx and upper body will gradually become weak or spastic, which will result in ineffective transmission. Speech therapy has a special place in the speech and swallowing rehabilitation of these patients: to facilitate speech, focusing on breathing, correcting inefficient compensatory strategies, and teaching the use of alternative means of communication are done gradually and with the progress of the disease. Swallowing rehabilitation is also necessary with the aim of preventing aspiration and maintaining the person's nutritional level. Although it does not make the patient's swallowing process remain normal, it is very important in improving the person's quality of life. As the disease progresses, it may be necessary to feed other than orally.

This study aims to examine the acoustic characteristics of the second formant (F2) transition produced by Persian-speaking Broca’s aphasics compared to normal speakers. 

Eight subjects diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia and eight normal speakers participated in this study. The subjects produced six words (/ bâd / - / pâ / - / tâb / - / dâs / - / kâr / and / gâz /). The samples were analyzed using PRAAT and the F2 transition was measured for these words. F2 values were compared to the data available in the literature. 

Since the data distribution was abnormal in this study, the Mann-Whitney U test was applied. The results of this study show that the mean of the second formant transition in healthy people and people with aphasia are significantly different from each other in the words /Bâd/ and /Kâr/ (P<0.05), in which the mean of the second formant transition in both words was higher in the group of people with aphasia compared to healthy people. The results also showed that the mean of the second-formant transition in these six words is significantly different and higher in the group of aphasic people compared to the group of healthy people (P<0.05).

In patients with Broca’s aphasia, the F2 value was higher than normal speakers. The nature of Broca’s aphasia suggests that subjects with Broca’s aphasia show higher F2 values. Also, the focus on Broca’s aphasia indicates difficulties in applying secondary articulation to a sufficient extent. The results of these studies are likely clinically applicable in particular to improving assessment approaches and therapeutic programs for Persian speakers with Broca’s aphasia.

Narrative discourse is a crucial subset of discourse production that can be used to assess high levels of language processing like microlinguistic and macrolinguistic structures. Because patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) have more problems at high levels of language processing, this study aims to analyze narrative discourse in MS patients and compare it with healthy people.

This research was a descriptive-analytic study. The study participants included 15 patients with MS and 15 healthy controls matched for age and education level. For investigating the narrative discourse, we used the Persian Narrative Discourse Test (PNDT). Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and the independent t-test in SPSS-24.

The mean values of syntactic complexity, verbal error ratio, cohesion ratio, and coherence in Persian-speaking patients with MS were 1.40, 0.42, 1.18, 2.32, respectively. Our findings indicated that regarding the macrolinguistic measures, there is a significant difference between MS patients and healthy subjects (P<0.05). However, there was no significant difference in the microlinguistic measures (P>0.05).

This study showed that narrative discourse analysis could help identify linguistic and communication problems in MS patients. Patients with MS had pragmatic language disorder.

Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) virus is the most severe and debilitating inflammatory disease in the central nervous system (CNS). Anomia is one of the most common language disorders in patients with HSE. No study has been done on naming treatment in patients with HSE. This study aims to compare the effect of the semantic feature analysis (SFA) and phonological components analysis (PCA), as naming treatments, in two patients with HSE virus, who had different degrees of naming problems, to find the most optimal anomia treatment.

The design of the current study was ABACA reversal single-subject. Two patients with HSE underwent speech therapy at Kashani Hospital. After determining the baseline, to treat the naming problem, the first patient was first treated with PCA and then SFA, and the second patient was first treated with SFA and then PCA. The naming ability of the patients was collected in two baseline phases, two treatment phases, and finally follow-up phase. To analyze all the five-phase, within- and between-condition visual analyses were implied for (a) relative, (b) absolute, (c) median, (d) mean level change, stability envelope, and trend. Besides, the effect size involving non-overlapping data (PND) and percentage of overlapping data (POD) were calculated in trained words.

The within-condition analysis of patient one showed 100% of the data of each phase, while for patient two, all data except the B phase were in the stability envelope. All details about the within-condition analysis of both patients showed different trends according to the order of treatments. Between-condition analysis of patient one exhibited the total PND of all phases 100% was contrary to the patient two was less than 70%. In both patients, the improvement caused by SFA was greater than PCA. Additionally, the maintenance after SFA was more than PCA. The order of treatment presentation as providing PCA then SFA were statistically more effective.

SFA and PCA could potentially improve the naming ability in HSE patients with anomia. Both mentioned treatments have significant effects on the increase of naming scores. As the treatment program presented SFA then PCA, respectively, we saw less maintenance in naming scores. On the other hand, providing the reverse sequence, PCA then SFA, exhibited an excellent improvement in naming scores and also more maintenance happened.

Non-fluent Aphasia is one of the worst types of Aphasia that needs treatment. In the other studies, action picture cards have been used as stimuli by the RET method. In this study, video clips was used as a verbal stimulus in RET to increase speech content.

The patient was a 45-year-old with a complaint of inability to speak after brain tumor surgery. Cognitive test results were normal in this patient. But the results of Persian Farsi battery showed severe Broca's aphasia. There was no such dysarthria and apraxia in this patient.

The patient was scheduled for one hour and three days a week.After 4 sessions, the content of the patient's words was more than twice the content of his words in the evaluation sessions. Key words: Aphasia, Content of utterances, video clips, treatment, non-fluent

Speech and language pathologists should include connected speech assessment as part of their evaluation for children with speech sound disorders. The purpose of the present study was to design and validate an instrument for assessment of articulation by story-retelling for Persian children. 261 typically developing children, aged 4-5 years old in Iran, Tehran, in 2016-2017, were recruited in the current study. First, two stories were designed. Next, the expert panel reviewed those two stories and selected one story for assessment. The strengths of the test for discriminating between the two age groups (48-54 months and 55-60 months) and between boys and girls were investigated for construct validity. Test-retest was performed for 15 children. Also, inter-rater reliability was evaluated via calculating the correlation between the two examiners’ scores. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 24, was used for statistical analysis. The significance level was set at (P<0.05). There was 80% or more agreement in experts’ response to questions regarding content validity. All of the reliability values were higher than 0.85. No significant difference was observed between boys and girls (P=0.77), but there was a significant difference between the two age groups (P<0.001). There was a significant correlation between this test and phonetic test of the Persian version of diagnostic articulation and phonology (r=0.62, P=0.002). The Persian story for the assessment of speech sound production is a reliable and valid instrument that can be used to evaluate the articulation of Persian children.

This study was conducted to examine the sentence comprehension and working memory in individuals with mild and moderate frontal lobe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and determine the relationship between them.

Participants included 18 patients with mild TBI, 17 patients with moderate TBI and 18 non-TBI individuals. The digit span subtest of the Wechsler intelligence scale-IV (WISC-IV) and a N-back test were used to evaluate working memory. Moreover, the syntactic comprehension subtest of Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) was used for sentence comprehension assessment.

The results showed that patients withmild and moderate TBI had a lower performance in comprehension of non-canonical sentences and working memory compared to the non-TBI group. There was also a significant correlation between sentence comprehension and working memory in the TBI groups.

Sentence comprehension and working memory in TBI patients with frontal lobe damage are significantly lower than that of the non-TBI group, which may lead to some daily communication problems in these individuals.

Aphasia is an acquired language injury apart from cognitive, motor, or sensory damages, as the result of a brain injury and stroke in the left hemisphere. In the acute phase of aphasia (the first two or three months) a preponderance of people show certain degrees of recovery, the neural mechanisms of which are yet to be detected, other than the fact that it is related to the plasticity changes in the patient’s brain. Neuroplasticity is the capacity of a brain to change or be modified at cellular or behavioral levels.
The current study aimed at reviewing the literature on neuroplasticity and factors affecting language recovery of patients with aphasia.
Data Sources: PubMed, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Irandoc, Magiran, SID, Web of Knowledge, Ovid, Springer, and manual search of reference lists from January 1990 to April 2017.
Inclusion Criteria: Neuroplasticity and aphasia keywords in the title of the article, studies conducted only on human samples, and adult samples with acquired aphasia.
Out of the 6637 retrieved studies, eight articles met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and two related papers were further reported. Recent studies show that three types of changes, in the nervous activity following stroke are closely related to aphasia recovery: reactivation of the injured areas of the left hemisphere or perilesional left hemisphere regions regarding language assignments, the ability to process language in the right hemisphere, and compensatory activity of the right hemisphere, which can hinder language recovery.
Most studies demonstrated that areas around the left hemisphere lesion engage in the recovery of the language; certain studies, on the other hand, reported that areas around the right hemisphere are involved, and some consider both hemispheres to be involved in the language recovery. It is difficult to predict the improvement of language owing to the involvement of various factors.
Limitations: One of the most important limitations was the unavailability of the full-text of three articles.

Anomia is one of the most common and persistent symptoms of aphasia. Although treatments of anomia usually focus on semantic and/or phonological levels, which both have been demonstrated to be effective, the relationship between the underlying functional deficit in naming and response to a particular treatment approach remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the effects of specific treatments (Semantic feature Analysis and Phonological Components Analysis) and their underlying functional deficit patterns within the framework of a cognitive processing model.
In an ABCB reversal control task design, four participants with aphasia were selected according to the criteria based on using a cognitive model of lexical processing. Each patient received two types of treatment. In SFA, features semantically associated to the target words were elicited from the patient, whereas in PCA treatment, the phonological components of the target words were the focus of treatment. Naming accuracy scores obtained in pre-treatment baseline phase were compared to post-treatment accuracy scores. Here, both item-specific effects and generalization of untrained items were analyzed.
Both SFA and PCA treatments have the potential to improve naming ability in participants; however, the treatment approach that corresponds exactly to the underlying deficit causing failure in word retrieval is more effective.
While PCA is more effective for participants with phonological impairments, SFA is more effective for participants with semantic impairments. Therefore, a direct relationship between underlying functional deficit and response to specific treatment was established for all participants.

Anomia - naming deficiency - is considered as the main symptom of aphasia. Although there are various treatments for naming deficiency, with the advent of technology, one of the ways that has expanded today is the use of computers in treatment. Although the effectiveness of computerized therapies has been investigated in different languages, due to the lack of examination of these treatments in the Persian language, the present study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of TAVANA computerized therapy in naming skills in a Persian-speaking nonfluent aphasia patient.
This was a single-subject study in which a patient with nonfluent aphasia and naming deficiency was chosen to receive computer therapy. In addition, a collection of non-teaching words was considered to evaluate the effect of generalization for the patient. Visual analysis and effect size of the percetage of non-overlapping data (PND) were used for data analysis.
Computer therapy improved the confronting naming ability in the client (PND = 100). There was also an improvement in the maintenance and generalization of untrained items as a result of this treatment (PND = 100).
The results of the study support the effectiveness of TAVANA computerized therapy, as an effective, intensive, low-cost, and admissible treatment in the Persian language, in improving the naming skills of a patient with nonfluent aphasia.

Naming impairment is known as the main symptom of aphasia. Despite the fact that numerous studies have found evidences to support the effective role of therapeutic interventions in recovery of naming impairments, treatment cannot be generalized for most of these interventions. The factors involved in no generalization in treatment are not definite yet. Damaged stage in word-finding process can be one of these factors. The present study aimed to investigate this relation. Treatments used in this study concentrated on damaged stage of word-finding.
In a cross-over single-subject study, four participants with aphasia whose problem was mainly naming were selected. Each patient received semantic features analysis and phonological components analysis treatments. For each patient, a series of untrained words were considered in which generalization was checked with validation of naming correctly.
Both therapeutic approaches led to improvement in the ability of naming untrained words; although generalization was significantly more in participants with phonological impairment following phonological treatment and participants with semantic impairment following semantic treatment.
The ability to predict a generalized pattern for a particular therapeutic approach has clinical significance. Our suggestion is that based on a psychological-linguistic model, first the stage of word-finding damage must be determined, and then commensurately, the treatment which targets the defeat stage must be applied.

Flaccid dysarthria is a group of motor speech disorders. Muscle weakness and reduced muscle tone, speed, range, and accuracy of speech movements are the primary speech features in these patients. Speech acoustic patterning in these patients shows deficits in motor control including problems in timing, articulatory coordination and laryngeal control. The aim of the present study was to investigate the speech timing through second-formant transition (F2T) acoustic analysis.
In this descriptive-analytical, cross-sectional and case-control study, ten speakers with flaccid dysarthria and ten speakers without dysarthria were participated. After exposure to the test environment, acoustic signals related to target words including voiced and voiceless stops were collected and recorded. After recording data through the software of Praat, spectrogram of each word was carefully examined to determine the second-formant transition.
The people with mild to moderate flaccid dysarthria possessed longer second-formant transition comparing with normal individuals and also differences between the two groups in bilabial and dental consonants were significant (P ≤ 0.05).
Increased duration of the second-formant transition in individuals with mild to moderate flaccid dysarthria indicates that in these patients, there are defects in the coordination, timing of movements and articulatory implementation to produce the target segment. In addition, the clinical implication of these results is that different consonants show varying sensitivity to the problem of speech motor control. Speech-language pathologists should pay special attention to duration of second-formant transition (bilabial, dental) and rate of variation in the program for flaccid dysarthria.

Changes in speech production are expected with aging. These changes are affected by changes in anatomy and physiology of speech production system, sensory feedbacks, motor control, and central processing of speech in older adults. Since normal aging involves a slowing of neural processes, it may be expected that speech and articulation rate are changed. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the changes in speech and articulation rate with aging.
PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science databases were searched using the keywords “aging” and “elderly” in combination with “speech rate” and “articulation rate” for finding articles published between the years 1959 and 2016.
According to exclusion and inclusion criteria, 15 articles were selected. According to Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Resources, these articles were located on third level. Results of four articles were contradictory with else. More of the studies showed that speech and articulation rate decreased with aging.
This is expected that by reasoning anatomical changes and decreases in cognitive capacity in aging, speech and articulation rate decreases.

Broca’s aphasia is one of the types of non-fluent aphasia that its main feature is imprecise speech sound productions. Different surveys have shown that patients with Broca’s aphasia have defects which can affect sound structure in their speech output، but it is less clear that the nature of these errors is an impairment in the selection and planning or articulatory implementation. Determination of the nature of speech errors in these patients is very important and necessary in order to recognize the basic mechanisms which are effective in creating these errors. The purpose of this descriptive study is to a review of studies which have investigated the nature of errors in acoustic ways in these patients. This descriptive study has been conducted by searching for the following keywords: “acoustic parameters، nature of errors، Broca’s aphasia، speech motor control and Speech errors. The following databases have also been used to conduct searches: web of knowledge، science direct، Google scholar and PubMed. Individuals with Broca’s aphasia possess defects including difficulties in timing، articulatory coordination، and laryngeal control in the field of speech motor control which are as a result of defects in the coordination، Timing of movements and articulatory implementation to produce the target segment Recent researches based on Acoustic parameters of the speech production patterns suggest that the main feature of speech impairment of people with Broca’s aphasic is a severe phonetic disorder relating to the articulator implementation of the selected and planned segments of speech.

The present research was done to determine the effectiveness of non-word repetition on the reading rate of third-grade dyslexic children in Isfahan. The present research was a single-subject study with multiple baseline in which 4 dyslexic children in Isfahan were examined. The subjects were selected from speech therapy clinics and reading disability centers on the basis of inclusion/exclusion criteria. After determining their baseline status they were included in the research in stepwise fashion. Each subject received 18 sessions of non-word training and was then followed-up after 2 weeks and was re-evaluated. The research tool was the ‘reading and dyslexic texts’ called the ‘Nema’ test (Noori & Moradi، 2008). The results were analyzed on the basis of visual analysis and descriptive statistical indicators. The intervention was effective in two of the subjects (PND=100%) and was not effective in the other two (PND=0%). This was a primary research investigating the effectiveness of non-word repetition on reading rate in dyslexic children. Two of the subjects improved، while the other two did not، which is perhaps due to the linguistic nature of their dyslexia. However، since our results may not be generalized to larger populations due to the small sample size، further studies with larger sample sizes need to be conducted to confirm our findings.

Broca’s aphasia is one type of non-fluent aphasia, of which imprecise speech sound production is a main feature. Acoustic patterns of speech in patients with Broca’s aphasia exhibit certain defects in the field of motor control such as difficulties in timing, articulatory coordination, and laryngeal control. In this study, the speech timing parameter in patients with mild to moderate Broca’s aphasia was investigated by the acoustic variable of murmur duration /m/ to determine the nature of motor control as well as the nature of errors.Methods & Materials: This was a cross-sectional case-control study. The subjects included 13 patients with mild to moderate Broca's aphasia as well as 13 normal individuals. After exposure to the appropriate test environment, acoustic signals related to target words were collected and recorded. After recording data with the PRAAT software, the spectrogram of each word was carefully examined to determine the murmur duration. Moreover, Paired T-test was used to compare the murmur duration between the two groups. People with mild to moderate Broca’s aphasia possess longer murmur duration in comparison to normal individuals. There was a significant difference between the two groups (p<0.001). The increasing duration of the nasal murmur in individuals with mild to moderate Broca’s aphasia indicated that speech errors in these patients are due to defects in coordination, timing of movements and articulatory implementation in producing the target segment. Therefore, understanding the nature of errors and effective mechanisms in creating them in this group of patients allows the planning of more appropriate therapeutic strategies on the basis of more accurate assessments.

Developmental dyslexia has been recognized as being one of the most common types of reading disorders. According to phonological deficit hypothesis، the main difficulties in affected children are phonological processing and making incorrect representations. Nonword repetition task taps the encoding، storage and retrieval of phonological representations، and therefore، is an appropriate tool for measuring these skills، particularly phonological working memory. This task involves a variety of underlying processes including speech perception، lexical and phonological knowledge، motor planning، and articulation. The aim of this study was to investigate the performance of dyslexic students in nonword repetition task and to analysis their errors. This was a nonexprimental analytical cross-sectional study in which a case control paradigm was adopted. Participants were 15 students with dyslexia and 35 normal students، all of whom were studying at the third grade of elementary school at the time of the study. These students did not have any gross neurological impairments، psychiatric problems or speech- language disorders and had normal intelligence and hearing acuity. 40 one-to-four-syllable nonwords were used for the assessment. Broad transcription was applied for recording responses. The results were statistically analyzed using descriptive and analytic methods. The dyslexic group obtained lower scores than did the control group in nonword repetition task and the difference between these two groups was statistically significant. The errors of dyslexic students in nonword repetition showed that they suffer some deficits in accessing، maintaining and retrieving phonological codes. Moreover، they have difficulties in distinguishing phonemes that were poorly encoded.

The ability of conversational repair is a subset of pragmatic language. When the listener does not understand the speaker''s intention، and the speaker cannot find a way of repairing the conversation to make his/her massage clear، communication will fail. This study aims to examine and compare the conversational repair skill in two groups of three and five year old children، to determine different conversational repair strategies and compare these skills among these groups. One hundred and twenty Persian speaking children of three and five years of Ahwaz، Iran، were selected. The study tools were two series of pictures. During the retelling of the pictures the examiner created a situation to elicit a conversational repair strategy. Percentages of the usage of different kinds of conversational repair in each group were calculated and compared using student''s t-test. The usage of repetition and inappropriate response is decreased in the group of five year olds compared to the three year olds، but cue-repair and repetition method is increased. The addition method has remained relatively constant. There was a significant difference between average percentage of using repetition (p=0. 04) and cue-repair (p=0. 001) of the two groups. The percentage of application of repetition method in three year olds and cue-term method in five year olds were significantly higher than other conversational repair strategies. With the increase in age and development of language skills the probability of using more complex and difficult strategies، like the cue-repair method، increases.

The relationship between phonological awareness and phonological disorders has been considered in recent decades. Phonological awareness deficits in children with phonological disorders could be due to a deficit in phonological abilities. The present study attempts to study the phonological awareness deficits in children with phonological disorders. This was a comparative and cross-sectional study. The research sample consisted of 25 children with phonological disorders and 25 normal children. Children with phonological disorders were selected by convenience sampling method and normal children were selected by matching with the disordered group. The research instruments consisted of the “phonetic information test” to determine the phonological disorders and the “phonological awareness test” to assess phonological awareness. The awareness of syllable blending and syllabification، rhyme and alliteration was also studied. The data were analyzed using SPSS-13، based on paired t-test، independent T-test and Chi-square. The mean score of phonological awareness in children with phonological disorders was significantly lower than normal children (P<0. 001). There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of awareness of syllabification (P=0. 073) and syllable blending (P=0. 189). But there was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of awareness of rhyme (P<0. 001) and alliteration (P<0. 001) The findings showed that children with phonological disorders are at a lower level than normal children in terms of phonological awareness. According to the results of this study، it can be recommended that the speech-language pathologists should consider phonological awareness when treating children with phonological disorders.

Autism is a complicated developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life as a result of a neurological disorder affecting performance. The present study aimed at studying significant developmental events happening to autistic children compared to those occurring for normal ones. 50 autistic children and 50 normal children with an age range of 4 to 11 years participated in this descriptive-analytic study which was conducted in Isfahan-Iran. Important developmental factors related to pre-, peri- and post-natal periods were collected from literature and a tailor-made questionnaire was designed to be later completed by children's mothers. The data was statistically analyzed via Chi-Square, Fischer Exact and Mann-Whitney test. The results indicated that the factors which occurred significantly more frequently among children with autism were as follows: advanced maternal and paternal age, maternal stress, allergic signs during pregnancy, familial marriages, having a history of communication and/or speech-language disorders in the family, cesarean delivery, high fever after birth, seizures and head trauma (P < 0/05). Although this study cannot determine decisive causes of development of autism in children, it can introduce possible risk factors. In fact, our findings suggest that pre-natal, neonatal and post-natal factors contributing to deviant growth are important in the pathogenesis of the disorder.

A consonant cluster is defined as a group or sequence of consonants that appear together in a syllable without any intervening vowel between them. The age of acquisition of consonant clusters is of special important. The ability to produce consonant clusters is reported to emerge when children are around 2 years of age. These early attempts usually result in simplified clusters which are eventually elaborated into correct clusters. The aim of the present study was to determine the acquisition age of some consonant clusters and their developmental patterns in Farsi-speaking children. 120 normal Farsi-speaking children with the age range of 2 to 4 years who lived in Isfahan at the time of experiment participated in this descriptive study. In the present study, the ability to produce clusters was evaluated through picture naming. An assessment tool was tailor-made for this research and it consisted of 24 words with cvcc structure. Study results showed that the age of acquisition for mp and nd was 2.7-3 years. Xt, sk, sb, ∫k, st, ft, st, ∫t, ks, bz, f∫, ng and ∫m was acquired at 3 to 3.6 years and rs, rm, rf, rg, rd, rx, tr were appeared between 3.7 to 4 years. Results indicated that age of acquisition was started around 2.5. Considering the sequence of acquired clusters, it was revealed that clusters were developed in parallel with consonant development. In other words, consonant clusters containing stop and nasal consonant are acquired before other clusters.