zahra ghayoumi anaraki

Children with hearing loss (HL) are susceptible to language delay due to the reduced ability to receive and process audible sounds, and their access to normal language development is the main concern of their family and related professionals. This study aimed to investigate the differences present in macro- and micro-structures of oral narrative, lexical and phonological awareness skills among preschool-aged children with sensorineural HL who wear hearing aids (HA) or cochlear implant prosthesis (CI) and, children with typical development (TD). Also, the association between these language domains was explored.

Twenty-three HL children in the age range of 4 to 7 years old (including 13 children with HA and 10 children with CI), and 12 children with normal hearing were evaluated using storytelling, a lexical task, and three phonological awareness tasks. Narrative samples were transcribed and coded for several macro- (i.e., coherence) and micro-structure (i.e., grammatical complexity and cohesion) measures.

The language measures were not significantly different between children with HA and CI. Compared to their same-age peers, children with HA were significantly weaker in all language domains except syllable segmentation. Also, the scores of CI children were significantly lower than their TD peers in all language measures except syllable segmentation and coherence index (P<0.01). A positive and significant correlation (P<0.05) was observed among phonological awareness skills, lexical performances, and narrative macro- and micro-structure measures in both groups of children with HL and typical development.

Regardless of the type of hearing aids, children with HL are at greater risk for a deficit in basic and higher level language skills and so, need additional speech and language training, especially in preschool years. The associations between different language skills and their effects on language acquisition and rehabilitation of HL children are discussed.

Due to the high prevalence of communication disorders, augmentative and alternative communication methods are one the options ahead to solve the problems of these people. Since there are no complex tools for Persian-speaking children with communication disorders, we decided to design communication assistant software for these children that produces sound output.

In the first step, 337 basic Persian words were selected based on an extensive literature review on basic words of Persian-speaking children and consultation with experts. To evaluate the Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and the Content Validity Index (CVI), nine speech and language pathologists commented about the appropriateness of the words and 247 words remained. Then, the images of the remaining words were designed by a graphic designer, and, their CVI was evaluated by 6 speech and language pathologists. In the next step, words were audio recorded by an experienced speaker in the studio. Then, a programmer designed the AAC software as a cross-platform software based on the words and their images using the C # programming language.

According to Lawshe’s model, for nine experts, the words with a CVR value of >0.78 have remained. In addition, the CVI of the final 247 words was 0.95 and the total CVI for images was estimated as 0.8.

The results revealed that the designed electronic AAC system has a good content validity for Persian-speaking children with communication disorders.

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.

Background & Aim:

Phonological awareness skills as part of phonological processing skills can predict the degree of success in acquiring written and reading skills. Phonological awareness skills are one of the areas of concern in children with severe and profound hearing loss, which has been less studied in these children. So the aim of this study was to evaluate these skills in cochlear implant children and compare them with their normal counterparts.

Studied population included 25 CI children and 25 normal children aged 4-6 years, who were monolingual Persian speakers. There were selected CI children and the normal children from the Rehabilitation Center of Naqmeh and the Kindergartens in Mashhad respectively. After selecting each participant, test of phonological awareness was administered. In order to compare the mean scores of each of the subtests, data were analyzed using SPSS software and Mann-Whitney U test.

Ethical Considerations:

This study was registered with the Ethics Committee of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences under code IR.MUMS.REC.1396.263  .

Mean scores of cochlear implant children were significantly lower than normal children in all phonological awareness subscales (P<0.05).

In both age groups, normal children showed better performance than the cochlear implanted children in the phonological awareness test. Weakness of phonological awareness skills in cochlear implant children seems to be associated with hearing deprivation before cochlear implantation, which requires to speed up surgery at an early age and implementation of an effective rehabilitation program.

Voice disorder is a multifactorial impairment. Several studies have shown that there is a direct relationship between voice problems and voice-related jobs. Therefore, professional voice users, including teachers, are at high risk of voice disorders, which threatens the employment positions. Also, the investigation of voice impairments among faculty members seems essential. The purpose of this study is to assess the prevalence of voice disorders in faculty members, its impact on the physical, emotional, and functional status of this job group, with and without voice disorders, and the correlation of voice disorders with some risk factors. Methods The participants of this study were 114 university teaching faculty members of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, with a mean age of 43.95±0.98 years. The current cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study used a demographic questionnaire and Voice Handicap Index (VHI) as the data collection instruments. In the present study, based on VHI test results, participants with a total VHI score greater than 14.5 are considered to have voice disorders. Results The prevalence of voice disorders among university teaching faculty members was 27.19%. There was a significant correlation between allergy and voice disorders (P= 0.04). Significant differences were also found between the two study groups in terms of the total score of the VHI and its subscales (P <0.001). Conclusions Considering the 27.19% prevalence of voice disorders among university teaching faculty members and its effect on the total VHI score, our results confirm that education, prevention, and treatment programs are critical to lessen the frequency of voice disorders related to teaching. However, it has been found that this job group with voice disorders is four times more likely to have allergies than those without voice disorder, which indicates the importance of controlling this problem.

Accurate diagnosis of Persian children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is regarded as a challenge for Speech and Language Pathologists (SLPs) in Iran because of the lack of formal linguistic tests that can reliably distinguish language-impaired children from Typically-Developing (TD) children. This study aimed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of the photographic expressive Persian Grammar Test (PEGT). 

The participants were forty 4-6 years old monolingual Persian speakers who were categorized into two groups of DLD (n=20) and TD (n=20) children based on the MLU (mean length of utterance) scores as the reference standard and clinical judgment of an experienced speech-language pathologist. PEGT was administered to all participants, and the results were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test and Rock Chart (ROC) to estimate the ability of the PEGT to differentiate between children with DLD and TD and to determine its sensitivity, specificity, and the optimal cutoff point. 

The results revealed that children with DLD performed significantly lower than their TD peers in the PEGT (P<0.05). Both sensitivity and specificity measures of PEGT were estimated as 100% at the optimal cut-off point of 12.5. 

The data provide empirical support for the use of the PEGT for accurate diagnosis of preschool children with DLD from their TD peers.

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.

Syntax has a high importance among linguistic parameters and the prevalence of syntax deficits is relatively high in children with language disorders. As such, independent examination of syntax in language development is of paramount importance. In this regard, Iranian language pathologists are faced with the lack of standardized tests. The present study aimed to determine the most frequent and essential morphosyntactic structures of the Persian-speaking children aged 4-6 years, as an initial step in the design of a test to assess their expressive morphosyntactic features.
The present descriptive qualitative study was designed and conducted in two phases in Tehran (Iran) during 2014-2015. The first phase involved an extensive review of the Persian grammar sources, language development texts, modeling a test called SPELT-3, and morphosyntactic analysis of samples of spontaneous speech from 30 Persian-speaking children aged 4-6 years. In this phase, 30 structures were extracted as the most frequent morphosyntactic features used by children aged 4-6 years. The second phase of the research involved directed content analysis via in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 10 specialists in the fields of linguistics, language, and speech pathology.
In total, 30 morphosyntactic structures were extracted in the first phase of the study as the most frequent morphosyntactic structures of the Persian-speaking children aged 4-6 years. The overall validity of these structures was estimated at 70%.
Based on the results, the selected morphosyntactic structures could be the foundation for morphosyntactic assessments in Persian-speaking children aged 4-6 years.

Stuttering is a communication disorder. It is expected that stuttering may have negative impact on individuals’ mental and emotional health, which may affect their quality of life. Therefore, this paper aims to study components of social phobia inventory in Persian adults with stuttering and compare the likelihood (odds) of social phobia in the stuttering group to that in the control group.
Using social phobia inventory, this case-control study compared social phobia in 33 adults with stuttering and 33 age-gender-education matched subjects with fluent speech. All the participants were 18 years or above.
Independent t-test showed that the total score of the social phobia inventory. Its fear component has significant statistical differences between group of adults with and without stuttering. Moreover, the adults with stuttering have over two times more social phobia symptoms than that in ones who don’t.
Our results suggest that social phobia should be considered in therapy programs for adults with stuttering. In addition to restructuring speech, a part of the treatment program should address people’s social phobia, especially their feeling of fear, in order to curtail some of the negative consequences associated with stuttering.

Specific language impairment (SLI) is one of the most common disorders of language development in children, which has been less addressed in Persian studies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the grammatical characteristics of Persian-speaking children with SLI using Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test (PEGT).
This case-control, cross-sectional study was conducted on 16 children with SLI and 16 normal children aged 4-6 years, who were monolingual Persian speakers. The subjects in both groups were age- and gender-matched. After selecting each participant, PEGT was administered and results were recorded in an answer sheet and analyzed. To analyze the data, the mean total scores of the test and mean scores related to each syntactic structure of the PEGT were compared between the two groups using Mann–Whitney test.
In this study, a significant difference was observed in mean total scores of the test between the studied groups. In detail, the mean score of the normal group was significantly higher as compared with the SLI group (P According to the results of the present study, children with SLI had weaker performance as compared with their normally developing age-matched peers in evaluated morphosyntactic structures.

The basal ganglia (BG) controls different patterns of behavior by receiving inputs from sensory-motor and pre-motor cortex and projecting it to pre-frontal, pre-motor and supplementary motor areas. As the exact role of BG in swallowing process has not been fully determined, we aimed at reviewing the published data on neurological control in the swallowing technique to have a better understanding of BG’s role in this performance.
English-language articles, which were published before December 2015 and eligible for the present research, were extracted from databases according to the inclusion criteria, i.e. articles related to “neurological aspects of swallowing” and/or “lesions of sub-cortical or BG relevant to swallowing disorders”.
This systematic review indicates that BG is a complicated neurological structure with indistinct functions and that swallowing is a sophisticated process with several unknown aspects.
Swallowing is a multifaceted performance that needs contribution of the tongue, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus as well as the neurological structures such as neocortex and subcortical regions - BG and brainstem.

Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis (UVFP) and vocal fold Polyps lead to some vocal fold asymmetry and consequently, changing the acoustic characteristics. In this study, we aimed reporting these acoustic changes due to the mentioned disorders. Method & Materials: This study was a cross sectional, descriptive and analytical. Subjects were 5 patients with UVFP, 5 with polyps and 5 normal persons who were selected in an easy access mode. Normal subjects in the control group were selected among available people with considerations of their gender and age. For each subject, samples of sustaining vowel of /a/ and /i/ were obtained and then analyzed by the Praat software. The results were analysed statistically by SPSS version 17 via using Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. In vowel /a/: Harmony to Noise Ratio (HNR) in UVFP (p=0.006) and in polyp subjects (p=0.047) was significantly different with normal group. Noise to Harmony Ratio (NHR) and jitter in UVFP had significant differences (p = 0.006) with normal group. In vowel /i/: Jitter in UVFP (P= 0.006) and in Polyp (P= 0.047) was significantly different with normal data. Also, the jitter was the only variable which had significant differences between two groups of patients (p=0.04). HNR, NHR, Jitter in vowel /a/ and jitter in vowel /i/ seem possibly more reliable for initial assessment and improvement monitoring of the patients.

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.