Background and Aim: Understanding and defining developmental norms of auditory comprehension is a necessity for detecting auditory-verbal comprehension impairments in children. We hereby investigated lexical auditory development of Persian (Farsi) speaking children.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, auditory comprehension of four 2-5 year old normal children of adult&aposs child-directed utterance at available nurseries was observed by researchers primarily to gain a great number of comprehendible words for the children of the same age. The words were classified into nouns, verbs and adjectives. Auditory-verbal comprehension task items were also considered in 2 sections of subordinates and superordinates auditory comprehension. Colored pictures were provided for each item. Thirty 2-5 year old normal children were randomly selected from nurseries all over Tehran. Children were tested by this task and subsequently, mean of their correct response were analyzed.
Results: The findings revealed that there is a high positive correlation between auditory-verbal comprehension and age (r=0.804, p=0.001). Comparing children in 3 age groups of 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5 year old, showed that subordinate and superordinate auditory comprehension of the former group is significantly lower (p<0.05) than the others . Intra-group comparisons revealed no significant difference between nouns, verbs and adjectives (p>0.05), while the difference between subordinate and superordinate auditory comprehension was significant in all age groups (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Auditory-verbal comprehension develop much faster at lower than older ages and there is no prominent difference between word linguistic classes including nouns, verbs and adjectives. Slower development of superordinate auditory comprehension implies semantic hierarchical evolution of words.

Background and Aim: Phonological processing skills include the abilities to restore, retrieve and use memorized phonological codes. The purpose of this research is to compare and evaluate phonological processing skills in 6-7 year old blind and sighted Persian speakers in Tehran, Iran.
Methods: This research is an analysis-comparison study. The subjects were 24 blind and 24 sighted children. The evaluation test of reading and writing disorders in primary school students, linguistic and cognitive abilities test, and the naming subtest of the aphasia evaluation test were used as research tools.
Results: Sighted children were found to perform better on phoneme recognition of nonwords and flower naming subtests and the difference was significant (p<0.001). Blind children performed better in words and sentence memory the difference was significant (p<0.001). There were no significant differences in other subtests.
Conclusion: Blind children&aposs better performance in memory tasks is due to the fact that they have powerful auditory memory.

Background and Aim: Pragmatic impairment is the main cause of communication difficulties in hearing-impaired children and teaching pragmatic skills in these children is too challenging for clinicians. Thus, creating written and formalized therapy plans can be useful for rehabilitation team, clients and therapists.

Methods: A therapy-plan was designed and content validity of it was determined. A single case subject design (a multiple baselines research design) was used to determine the efficacy of the therapy plan to improve four domains of pragmatic in five hearing-impaired children (5 to 8 years). The experiment was divided into three phases including baseline, treatment and follow-up. Treatment phase consisted of 16 sessions and subjects were enrolled in the phase in stair way. The data were analyzed with effect size and visual analysis.

Results: According to expert's opinions, the therapy plan of pragmatic skills was valid. Visual analysis of diagrams showed that all subjects progressed in turn-taking, topic maintenance and response to request for clarification domains and the effect sizes (ES) were high (ES>0.8). Also, there were medium effect sizes (0.8≥ES≥0.2) in certain subjects. In request for clarification domain, some of subjects did not show desired improvement by visual analysis and effect sizes were medium. But, others showed improvement and had high effect sizes.

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.

Background and Aim: The ways in which words are phonologically stored and organized change with maturation. Hence, most researchers agree on the issue of phonological representations abilities evolve over time . This study aimed to determine the quality of phonological representations in normal Persian-speaking boys and girls.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study , quality of phonological representations of 240 normal children at the age of 54 to 77 months was investigated using descriptive - analytical method s . The subjects were randomly selected among the children in kindergartens and preschoolers in Arak city, Iran. The study tool was a researcher-made quality of phonological representations test.

Results: Significant differences were found between age groups in the scores of quality of phonological representations (p<0.01). Subjects in the first ( aged 54 to 59 months ) and fourth (aged 72 to 77 months ) age-group had the lowest and highest scores, respectively. The differences in mean scores between 54 to 59 month- and 66 to 71 month-old and between 66 to 71 month- and 72 to 77 month-old children were not significant. There were significant differences in other group mean scores (p<0.001). In all groups of syllables (i.e., words with two , three and four syllables ), o lder children have better performance. The mean scores of quality of phonological representations in the two groups of boys and girls in any of the age groups were not significantly different from each other.

Conclusion: It seems that subjects' performances have improved with increase in age and gender does not affect the quality of phonological representations.

Background and Aim: Word definition is one of the complicated language skills that require education and linguistic awareness. In this study , comparison was made in word definition ability of children between ages of 4.5 to 7.5 years.

Methods: This study was cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical in nature . Participants included 107 girls and boys who where in age group 1 (54-65 months), age group 2 (66-77 months), and age group 3 (78-90 months). They were selected by multistage sampling method and recruited from nurseries and primary schools in 1, 7, and 17 municipal districts of Tehran . Word definition task was performed on each subject. The reliability was assessed by two independent values and the validity was determined by the content. Kruskal- Wallis and Mann-Whitney U statistical methods were used for analysis.

Results: Mean score of the content in word definition was significantly increased by age (p=0.001). In the second and third age groups there was no significant difference in the content of word definition. The most response that used in all ages was the functional response. With increasing age, error rate (p=0.002) and identical (p=0.003) responses significantly decreased however, percentage use of combination II (p<0.001) responses significantly increased.

Conclusion: By increasing age, quality of definitions in terms of content is improved and definitions change from functional and concrete responses to c ombination II definitions.

Background and Aim: Many studies have demonstrated a close relationship between phonological working memory and language abilities in normal children and children with language developmental disorders, such as those with cochlear implants. A review of these studies would clarify communication and learning in such children and provide more comprehensive information regarding their education and treatment. In this study, the characteristics of phonological working memory and its relationship with language abilities in children with cochlear implants was examined.

Recent Findings: In this study, the authors studied the characteristics of phonological working memory and its relationship with language abilities of children with cochlear implants. These studies showed that in addition to demographic variables, phonological working memory is a factor that affects language development in children with cochlear implants. Children with cochlear implants typically have a shorter memory span.

Conclusion: It is thought that the deficiency in primary auditory sensory input and language stimulation caused by difficulties in the processing and rehearsal of auditory information in phonological working memory is the main cause of the short memory span in such children. Conversely, phonological working memory problems may have adverse effects on the language abilities in such children. Therefore, to provide comprehensive and appropriate treatment for children with cochlear implants, the reciprocal relationship between language abilities and phonological working memory should be considered.

Background and Aim: Specific language impairment (SLI), one variety of developmental language disorder, has attracted much interest in recent decades. Much research has been conducted to discover why some children have a specific language impairment. So far, research has failed to identify a reason for this linguistic deficiency. Some researchers believe language disorder causes defects in phonological working memory and affects auditory processing speed. Therefore, this study reviews the results of research investigating these two factors in children with specific language impairment.

Recent Findings: Studies have shown that children with specific language impairment face constraints in phonological working memory capacity. Memory deficit is one possible cause of linguistic disorder in children with specific language impairment. However, in these children, disorder in information processing speed is observed, especially regarding the auditory aspect.

Conclusion: Much more research is required to adequately explain the relationship between phonological working memory and auditory processing speed with language. However, given the role of phonological working memory and auditory processing speed in language acquisition, a focus should be placed on phonological working memory capacity and auditory processing speed in the assessment and treatment of children with a specific language impairment.