Background and Aim: Hearing impaired individuals, who have undergone cochlear implantation, do not have satisfactory relationships with their peers and cannot be fully integrated into the hearing communities. The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a family-oriented social skills training program on cochlear implant users.
Methods: In this experimental study, 16 volunteer families consisting of mothers and their 12-19 year old children, who had undergone cochlear implantation at least two years in advance, were chosen from 328 families, members of the Hearing Rehabilitation Association of Iran. They responded to social skills rating scale as pre-test after they were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental group underwent a 12-session social skills training. The social skills rating scale was then administered as a post-test in the two groups.
Results: The results showed the effectiveness of the family-oriented social skills training program on assertion (p<0.01), self-controlling (p<0.01), and general social skills (p<0.01) however, they showed no significant effect on cooperation (p>0.05).
Conclusion: The study revealed that family-oriented social skills training program is effective in improving the social skills of individuals with cochlear implantation. Therefore, this training program can be employed to improve these skills as an integral part of the rehabilitation program.

Background and Aim: Clinicians and researchers always need standard measures for the evaluation of auditory perception and speech production in deaf children, particularly those with cochlear implants. This study addresses the reliability and validity of the Persian version of categorization of auditory performance (CAP) scale and speech intelligibility rating (SIR) in cochlear-implanted prelingual deaf children.

Methods: A total of 92 cochlear-implanted deaf children aged 1.3-15.7 years participated in the study. Test-retest reliability, inter-rater reliability, and criterion and construct validity of the scales were investigated.

Results: The obtained test-retest reliability for categorization of the auditory performance scale and speech intelligibility rating was 0.82 and 0.99 (p<0.01), respectively, whereas the suggested inter-rater reliability based on average Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.73 and 0.70 for the two scales (p<0.01), which appear acceptable. The concurrent validity of the scales was 0.64 and 0.69 (p<0.01). The construct validity for categorization of the auditory performance scale ranged between 0.58 and 0.74 (p<0.01), whereas the same feature for the speech intelligibility rating indicated a range between 0.66 and 0.69 (p<0.01).

Conclusion: The findings of this investigation indicated that both CAPII and SIR scales are reliable and valid instruments for the assessment of auditory perception and speech production of cochlear-implant deaf children.