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Background and Aim: Reading is the most important human need for learning. In normal-hearing people working memory is a predictor of reading comprehension. In this study the relationship between working memory and reading comprehension skills was studied in hearing-impaired children, and then compared with the normal-hearing group.
Methods: This was a descriptive-analytic study. The working memory and reading comprehension skills of 18 (8 male, 10 female) sever hearing-impaired children in year five of exceptional schools were compared by means of a reading test with 18 hearing children as control group. The subjects in the control group were of the same gender and educational level of the sample group.
Results: The children with hearing loss performed similarly to the normal-hearing children in tasks related to auditory-verbal memory of sounds (reverse), visual-verbal memory of letters, and visual-verbal memory of pictures. However, they showed lower levels of performance in reading comprehension (p<0.001). Moreover, no significant relationship was observed between working memory and reading comprehension skills.
Conclusion: Findings indicated that children with hearing loss have a significant impairment in the reading comprehension skill. Impairment in language knowledge and vocabulary may be the main cause of poor reading comprehension in these children. In hearing-impaired children working memory is not a strong predictor of reading comprehension.

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Background and Aim: An imbalance between phonatory subsystems may lead to disturbing phonatory muscular balance and consequently voice disorders. Based on theoretical issues, criterion-based laryngeal manual therapy, as a novel treatment method which is supported by classical laryngeal manual therapy, can improve voice quality using manual maneuvers combined with phonatory tasks. The present study aimed to report the treating effects of this method on hyperfunctional voice disorders.

Methods: Twenty adult participants with hyperfunctional voice disorders by the least three months history of voice disorder were selected. The participant’s voices were assessed multidimensionally using acoustic, audio-pecreptual and stroboscopic assessments before and after treatment.

Results: There were a decrease in jitter (p=0.003) and shimmer (p<0.001) and also, increase in harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) (p<0.001) of vowel /a/ after treatment. Besides, there was an increase in harmony to noise ratio (p=0.009) and decrease in jitter (p=0.020) of vowel /i/, too. There were not significant changes in shimmer amount of vowel /i/ (p=0.170) after treatment. There were highly significant changes in all aspects of audio-perceptual (p<0.001) and videostroboscopic (p<0.001) parameters.

Conclusion: Using voice-based laryngeal manual therapy can be a treatment method in handling hyperfunctional voice disorders.

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Background and Aim: Several studies have demonstrated deficits in rapid naming in dyslexic readers however the extent of deficit is different in various orthographies. This study was intended to survey the naming speed in Persian children with dyslexia.

Methods: Rapid automatized naming (RAN) task of 19 children with dyslexia were compared with 31 nondyslexic children. Participants were selected from the students of the second grade of primary schools in Tehran city, Iran, with normal intelligence [intelligence quotient]. Nondyslexic children were at the age of 7.7 to 8.7 years (mean=7.6) and dyslexics were 7.8 to 9.4 years old (mean=8.1). Reading accuracy and speed were assessed by text reading (Diagnostic Reading Test), and high frequency word, low frequency word and nonword reading (Reading and Dyslexia Test).

Results: Dyslexic readers needed more time than non-dyslexics when naming objects (p<0.001), numbers (p=0.001) and letters (p<0.001). The mean of dyslexics z-scores were -1.98 on objects, -1.96 on numbers and -3.35 on letters. 42% of dyslexics did not show any deficit on rapid automatized naming task. All of the subtests were correlated to reading speed (p<0.050), but among subtests of rapid automatized naming task, only letter naming was correlated to reading accuracy (p<0.050).

Conclusion: More than half of dyslexics cases showed an apparent deficit in naming speed (objects, numbers and letters), which was more evident at letters. Naming speed was related to reading accuracy and reading speed although the relationship was stronger with the second one.

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Background and Aim: The language sample analysis (LSA) is more common in other languages than Persian to study language development and assess language pathology. We studied some psychometric properties of language sample analysis in this research such as content validity of written story and its pictures, test-retest reliability, and inter-rater reliability.

Methods: We wrote a story based on Persian culture from Schneider’s study. The validity of written story and drawn pictures was approved by experts. To study test-retest reliability, 30 children looked at the pictures and told their own story twice with 7-10 days interval. Children generated the story themselves and tester did not give any cue about the story. Their audio-taped story was transcribed and analyzed. Sentence and word structures were detected in the analysis.

Results: Mean of experts' agreement with the validity of written story was 92.28 percent. Experts scored the quality of pictures high and excellent. There was correlation between variables in sentence and word structure (p<0.05) in test-retest, except complex sentences (p=0.137). The agreement rate was 97.1 percent in inter-rater reliability assessment of transcription. The results of inter-rater reliability of language analysis showed that correlation coefficients were significant.

Conclusion: The results confirmed that the tool was valid for eliciting language sample. The consistency of language performance in repeated measurement varied from mild to high in language sample analysis approach.

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Background and Aim: Speech and language pathologists (SLP) often refer to phonological data as part of their assessment protocols in evaluating the communication skills of children. The aim of this study was to develop the Persian version of the phonological test in evaluating and diagnosing communication skills in Persian speaking children and to evaluate its validity and reliability.

Methods: The Persian phonological test (PPT) was conducted on 387 monolingual Persian speaking boys and girls (3-6 years of age) who were selected from 12 nurseries in the northwest region of Tehran. Content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were assessed by speechtherapists and linguists. Correlation between speech and language pathologists experts' opinions and Persian phonological test results in children with and without phonological disorders was evaluated to investigate the Persian phonological test validity. In addition, the Persian phonological test test-retest reliability was investigated.

Results: Both content validity ratio and content validity index were found to be acceptable (CVR≥94.71 and CVI=97.35). The PPT validity was confirmed by finding a good correlation between s peech and language pathologists experts' opinions and Persian phonological test results ( r _Kappa =0.73 and r _Spearman =0.76). The percent of agreement between transcription and analyzing error patterns in test-retest (ranging from 86.27%-100%) and score-rescore (ranging from 94.28%-100%) showed that Persian phonological test had a very high reliability.

Conclusion: The results of this study show that the Persian phonological test seems to be a suitable tool in evaluating phonological skills of Persian speaking children in clinical settings and research projects.