Background and Aim: Hearing impairment affects all aspect of individual life, specially language and communication skills. When hearing impairment is congenital or occurs early in life, the child's ability to learn optimally through audition, will be affected. The aim of this study was to evaluate linguistic skills of preschool hearing impaired children and compare these skills with normal peers.

Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 38 preschool hearing impaired children that the main handicap was severe to profound hearing loss with ability to communicate orally and 28 normal children with the same cultural and social context. Twenty four non linguistic variables including age, gender, the age of entrance of preschool center, number of hearing aids, etc. were obtained by filling a questionnaire and fifteen linguistics variables including number of utterance, morphemes, correct utterance, noun phrase, ambiguous utterance, correct sentences, compound sentences, etc. were collected by some part of TOLD-P-3 test and three complementary questions. Then we compared the data from two groups.

Results: There were significant differences between number of utterance, number of correct mean length utterance, number of well-formed sentences in normal and hearing impaired group (p<0.000). There were no significant difference between unintelligible utterances, repetitive utterances and bad-formed sentences between two groups(p>0.05).

Conclusion: This study showed a severe deficit in linguistic skills in preschool hearing impaired children.

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: 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.

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: Some children with speech sound disorder (SSD) have difficulty with phonological awareness skills therefore, the purpose of this study was to survey the correlation between phonological processes and phonological awareness.

Methods: Twenty-one children with speech sound disorder, aged between 5 and 6, participated in this cross-sectional study. They were recruited from speech therapy clinics at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. They were selected using the convenience sampling method . Language, speech sound, and phonological awareness skills were investigated by the test of language development-third edition (TOLD-3), the Persian diagnostic evaluation articulation and phonology test, and the phonological awareness test. Both Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlations were used to analyze the data.

Results: There was a significant correlation between the atypical phonological processes and alliteration awareness (p=0.005), rhyme awareness (p=0.009), blending phonemes (p=0.006), identification of words with the same initial phoneme (p=0.007), and identification of words with the same final phoneme (p=0.007). Analyzing the correlation on the basis of the phoneme and syllable structure separately showed there was a significant correlation between the atypical phoneme structure and alliteration awareness (p=0.001), rhyme awareness (p=0.008), blending phonemes (p=0.029), identification of words with the same initial phoneme (p=0.007), and identification of words with the same final phoneme (p=0.003).

Conclusion: Results revealed a relationship between phonological processes and phonological awareness in children with speech sound disorder. Poor phonological awareness was associated with atypical phonological processes especially at the phoneme level.