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Hearing function can affect communication skills and especially speech and language abilities.As a result, most of the attempts in behavioral audiometry have focused on the improvement and rectification of the techniques for hearing evaluations of the infants and children.Crib-O-gram and the methods suggested by northern & Downs are some of the mentined protocoles.

For years a significant advance for evaluating hearing sensitivity of children have been taken place. say, behavoral visual audiometry, VRA, TROCA and play audiometry. some studies also have been performed regarding to the use of BOA technique in mental retarded children and its success in evaluating hearing sensitivity in such children.other protocoles use rewarding thechniques for reinforcing child's responses which have been demonstrated to be success in the evaluation.

In addition,by comparying the results of frequency and intensity discrimination (by means of Luescher test), the changes in the resonance frequency of the outer ear and loudness conmfortable level(LDL), one can study the process of hearing development in children.

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Hearing function can affect communication skills and especially speech and language abilities.As a result, most of the attempts in behavioral audiometry have focused on the improvement and rectification of the techniques for hearing evaluations of the infants and children.Crib-O-gram and the methods suggested by northern & Downs are some of the mentioned protocols.For years a significant advance for evaluating hearing sensitivity of children have been taken place. say, behavioral visual audiometry, VRA, TROCA and play audiometry. some studies also have been performed regarding to the use of BOA technique in mental retarded children and its success in evaluating hearing sensitivity in such children.other protocols use rewarding techniques for reinforcing child's responses which have been demonstrated to be success in the evaluation.In addition,by comparing the results of frequency and intensity discrimination (by means of Luescher test), the changes in the resonance frequency of the outer ear and loudness comfortable level(LDL), one can study the process of hearing development in children.

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Estimation of the age of hearing loss diagnosis in every society is recommended to be compared with standard criteria to establish common dirth in management and rehabilitation. This study was conducted in order to determine the age of hearing loss diagnosis with respect to common criteria in Baghche-Ban school of hard of hearing children in Tehran.Methods:  In this retrospective cross-sectional study, 445 children in stages 2, 6 and 10 of Baghche-Ban school of hard of hearing participated. the research was performed by means of the three-stages questionaires that children filled with help of their parents.Results: The mean age of detection of hearing loss  in both acquired and congenital hearing loss in children was 3.5 year-old. while the age in which hearing loss was doubted was 1.8 year-old. In another word the mean age of hearing loss detection decreased as the hearing loss increases(in moderate- profound hearing loss)(P<0.01).Conclusion: among the refrence sources for refering children with hearing loss the least refering was related to physicians. Adversly the mean age of doubting and detection of hearing loss increased in children with family history of hearing loss.(P<0.01). Meanwhile no relationship was detected between the age of diagnosis of hearing loss and the number of deaf members in the family(P<0.02).

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Objective: As the cerebrovascular diseases (CVD) are among the most common anomalies that are directly or indirectly affecting the auditory cortex, studying in this area is important. We tried to evaluate the function of CANS in a group of 50-70 years old cerebrovascular accident (CVA) patients with no hearing complaint by competing sentences test (CST) as a dichotic speech test.
Method and Material: This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted at Loghman-e-Hakim hospital between 22, august 1999 and 20, July 2000 in a group of 30 normal 50-70 years old persons and a group of 40 patients with CVA including 30 patients with abnormal CT scan and 10 patients with normal CT scan.
Results: The results point out the mean scores of CST in the normal group were at normal range (80-100%) in both ears. And mean scores of CST decreased in the patients groups. There were significant difference between mean scores of CST in the patients with CVA and control groups. Conclusion: CST seems to be a valuable test in the CANS test batteries for the cerebrovascular diseases.

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Background and Aim: Physiologic measures of cochlear and auditory nerve function may be of assistance in distinguishing between hearing disorders due primarily to auditory nerve impairment from those due primarily to cochlear hair cells dysfunction. The goal of present study was to measure of cochlear responses (otoacoustic emissions and cochlear microphonics) and auditory brainstem response in some adults with auditory neuropathy/ dys-synchrony and subjects with normal hearing.
Materials and Methods: Patients were 16 adults (32 ears) in age range of 14-30 years with auditory neuropathy/ dys-synchrony and 16 individuals in age range of 16-30 years from both sexes. The results of transient otoacoustic emissions, cochlear microphonics and auditory brainstem response measures were compared in both groups and the effects of age, sex, ear and degree of hearing loss were studied.
Results: The pure-tone average was 48.1 dB HL in auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony group and the frequency of low tone loss and flat audiograms were higher among other audiogram&aposs shapes. Transient otoacoustic emissions were shown in all auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony people except two cases and its average was near in both studied groups. The latency and amplitude of the biggest reversed cochlear microphonics response were higher in auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony patients than control people significantly. The correlation between cochlear microphonics amplitude and degree of hearing loss was not significant, and age had significant effect in some cochlear microphonics measures. Auditory brainstem response had no response in auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony patients even with low stimuli rates.
Conclusion: In adults with speech understanding worsen than predicted from the degree of hearing loss that suspect to auditory neuropathy/ dys-synchrony, the frequency of low tone loss and flat audiograms are higher. Usually auditory brainstem response is absent in this patients and use of both otoacoustic emissions and cochlear microphonics responses to measure cochlear hair cells function are suggested in them.

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Background and Aim: Matching a mother wavelet to class of signals can be of interest in signal analysis and denoising based on wavelet multiresolution analysis and decomposition. As transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAES) are contaminated with noise, the aim of this work was to provide a quantitative approach to the problem of matching a mother wavelet to TEOAE signals by using tuning curves and to use it for analysis and denoising TEOAE signals. Approximated mother wavelet for TEOAE signals was calculated using an algorithm for designing wavelet to match a specified signal.
Materials and Methods: In this paper a tuning curve has used as a template for designing a mother wavelet that has maximum matching to the tuning curve. The mother wavelet matching was performed on tuning curves spectrum magnitude and phase independent of one another. The scaling function was calculated from the matched mother wavelet and by using these functions, lowpass and highpass filters were designed for a filter bank and otoacoustic emissions signal analysis and synthesis. After signal analyzing, denoising was performed by time windowing the signal time-frequency component.
Results: Aanalysis indicated more signal reconstruction improvement in comparison with coiflets mother wavelet and by using the purposed denoising algorithm it is possible to enhance signal to noise ratio up to dB.
Conclusion: The wavelet generated from this algorithm was remarkably similar to the biorthogonal wavelets. Therefore, by matching a biorthogonal wavelet to the tuning curve and using wavelet packet analysis, a high resolution time-frequency analysis for the otoacoustic emission signals is possible.

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Background and Aim: Internal Evaluation means assessment of abilities and potentials. To promote the quality of education, research, health and finally rehabilitation is one of the most important roles and responsibilities of the universities. Promotion of quality of the theoretical and practical education for the Audiology students provides this major with its final goal that is to serve society. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOTs) of the Audiology department and to identify the ways of diminishing weaknesses and threats.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on undergraduates, postgraduates, graduates, academic staff, and the director of Audiology department in 9 areas, including management flowchart, educational programs, instructional methods and curriculum models, students, educational areas and equipments, graduate, academic staff, research, and treatment. Data were collected by questionnaires. Results were analyzed descriptively and were expressed in raw and percentage.
Results: The scores of areas in two measures were as follows: management flowchart 4.36 (87.31%), educational programs 4.17 (83.58%), instructional methods and curriculum models 4.01 (80.26%), students 3.43 (68.60%), educational areas and equipment 3.60 (72.11%), from the view of undergraduates, post graduates, faculties, graduates 3.60 (72.03%), academic staff 4.03 (80.6%), research 3.52 (70.4%), and treatment 4.54 (90.80%). The highest score was, therefore, of the treatment area and the lowest belonged to the educational area and equipments. The score of the Audiology department, as the main factor was 3.89 out of 5 which was 77.88%.
Conclusion: Audiology group total score indicates the desirable status that can be promoted to the most desirable if SWOTs are considered.

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Background and Aim: phonological awareness skill is an integrated ability that is manifested in 4 skills including syllable, rhyme, and phoneme awareness and alliteration. The aim of the present study is to explore development of syllabic elision skill as an aspect of syllabic awareness.

Methods: It was a descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study. Thirty normal Persian-speaking children, 15 girls and 15 boys, were randomly selected throughout Tehran kindergartens. The participants were monolingual. Children should eliminate a syllable from any word presented, and to state the remaining section of the word. The responses were analyzed using SPSS software.

Results: Ability of 5 to 6 year-old children in eliminating a syllable in two syllabic words was significantly higher than those of three and four syllabic words and syllabic elision of three and four syllable words was significantly different (p=0.000). Two, three and four syllabic task correlations were statistically significant and the correlation between syllabic elision ability and the syllabic construct and the positioning of elision syllable was significant (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Syllabic elision skill blossoms in 5 to 6 year-old Persian-speaking children. The maximum ability of syllabic elision evolves after phonological recoding and after learning reading and writing skills. Syllabic elision ability is also influenced by the syllabic construct and the positioning of elision syllable.

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Background and Aim: Rhyme awareness is an important criterion for speech, language and writing processing. In Iran, there is no auditory tasks of rhyme awareness available for assessment of 5-6 year-old Persian-speaking children. The aim of this study was to develop and to evaluate Persian rhyme awareness tasks in 5-6 year-old Persian-speaking children.
Methods: A hundred normal 5-6 year-old Persian-speaking children (50 girls and 50 boys) were randomly selected. The two rhyme awareness tasks of this study were rhyme detection and rhyme production. The validity and reliability of these tasks were studied by content validity index, intraclass correlation coefficient, and standard error of measurement. The correlation between tasks was studied by Pearson correlation and the mean scores of two sections were compared by easiness level method. The comparison of mean scores of girls and boys were evaluated by independent t-test.
Results: The results showed that the proposed tasks had appropriate validity and reliability. The ability of children in production section was significantly more than in detection section. The correlation of each of two sections with total tasks was significant (p<0.05). In addition, the mean scores of girls and boys were not statistically different (p>0.05).
Conclusions: The proposed tasks are appropriate for assessment of rhyme awareness skills with appropriate validity and reliability in both genders. Two Sections of the tasks had significant correlations and influence on together. The abilities of girls and boys were the same.

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Background and Aim: The communication process includes both verbal and nonverbal elements. Nonverbal behavior or body language includes facial expression, eye contact, posture and prosody. Prosody conveys semantic or affective information to a listener. Nonetheless, so far in Iran no report on assessment of speech prosody comprehension in patients has ever been published. The aim of this study was to measure the validity and reliability of the prosody comprehension test specifically designed for the Persian language and culture.
Methods: This study is a type of test development. 73 sentences were orated by 22 professional vocalists in eight different prosodies. A total of 6582 voices were prepared which were listened by 200, 18-30 year-old students and a voice specialist. Having the content validity calculated for all voices, 1473 voices were found to be unanimously agreed upon by all participants in terms of emotional status which were analyzed by a voice specialist. Eventually, 169 voices were selected for developing the prosody comprehension test including the following four subtests: none motional prosody discrimination, emotional discrimination, naming of prosody and naming conflicts. Reliability of the test was determined by performing the test on 32, 18-60 year-old normal people.
Results: The designed test of comprehension prosody had 100% content validity ratio and 94% reliability and the correlation of test of prosody was 89% (p=0.001).
Conclusion: This test in Persian language has appropriate validity and reliability and is appropriate for assessment of prosody comprehension.

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Background and Aim: Studies have shown that long-term use of monaural hearing aid in symmetrical hearing losses may lead to physiological changes. In this research, the possibility of plasticity occurrence in bilaterally hearing impaired listeners fitted with only one hearing aid was investigated.

Methods: Our study was carried out on 12 elderly listeners with a mean age of 61.92 years who had symmetrical moderate to severe sensory neural hearing loss in both ears. All of the participants had minimum monaural hearing aid experience of 2 years. We used auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing in order to compare absolute latency and amplitude of wave V between the two ears of cases. Air conduction click stimuli were presented monaurally at 80, 90 and 100 dB nHL.

Results: Despite the shorter absolute latency of wave V in the fitted ear, no significant difference was found between the two ears (p>0.389). The difference between wave V amplitude of both ears was greater in 90 dB nHL level (p=0.043). Women showed shorter mean latency than men and the mean amplitude of women was greater than men. Significant gender difference was observed in absolute latency of wave V (p<0.037).

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that the use of monaural hearing aid in symmetrical hearing losses can induce neural plasticity within auditory brainstem pathways which can be displayed by auditory brainstem response test.

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Background and Aim: The different studies in normal children and those with developmental language disorders showed the relationship between language and development of theory of mind (ToM). But, there is not agreement between authors about role of language aspects (lexicon, semantic, syntax, and pragmatics) in development of theory of mind. The aim of this review article was the study of relationship of aspects of language and development of theory of mind in normal children and those with developmental language disorder.

Methods: This study was a narrative review. The Persian and English published articles during 1995 to 2012 were searched from different websites [Cochreane library, Proquest, Springer, Ebsco, Sciencedirect, PubMed, Magiran and Scientific Information Database (SID)]. Keywords included theory of mind, language, syntax, syntactic complement, semantic, lexicon and pragmatics. Then, the titles and abstracts of the related articles about relationship between language and theory of mind were selected and studied.

Conclusion: The language is the most important factor and predictor of theory-of-mind development. Although, lexicon, semantics, pragmatics and general language were important in development of theory of mind, but most of the articles had stressed the role of syntactic complements (sentences with mental or communicative verbs) in its development in normal children and children with developmental language disorders. As syntactic complements are necessary prerequisites for development of theory of mind, particularly for false belief concept, it is predicted that focus on training these aspects in children with developmental language disorders can influence on both theory of mind development and language complexity.

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Background and Aim: The hearing defects in deaf and hearing-impaired students also affect their cognitive skills such as memory in addition to communication skills. Hence, the aim of this study was to compare visual working memory in deaf and hearing-impaired students with that in normal counterparts.

Method: In the present study, which was a causal-comparative study using the André Rey test, 30 deaf and 30 hearing-impaired students were compared with 30 students in a normal group, and they were matched based on gender, intelligence, educational grade, and socioeconomic status.

Findings: Findings show that there is significant difference between the three groups’ subjects (p<0.05). The average of the normal group was more than that of the other two groups. However, the difference between the two auditory impaired groups was not significant (p>0.05).

Conclusion: Function of deaf or hard-of-hearing students in the visual working memory task was weaker in comparison with the normal counterparts, while the two deaf and hard-of-hearing groups have similar functions. With a better identification and understanding of the factors that affect the development of this cognitive ability, we can offer new methods of teaching and reduce many of the disadvantages of this group of people in the different fields of cognitive science.