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Background and Aim: Navigation information is processed and stored in different brain areas such as hippocampus. Since multiple pathways has been reported between vestibular nuclei and hippocampus and also cognitive dysfunction specifically in spatial memory is induced by vestibular deficits, it can be assumed that vestibular system stimulation ameliorates spatial memory. The aim of study was to evaluate the effect of galvanic vestibular stimulation on normal individual’s spatial memory.

Methods: In this experimental-interventional study, sixty 18-30-years-old women were randomly allocated in intervention and control groups. Intervention group undergone subthreshold bilateral bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation and control group received sham stimulation. Stimulation was presented for 15 minutes. Corsi Block Tapping (CBT) test scores were compared before and after subthreshold bipolar galvanic vestibular stimulation exposure or no stimulation in each group and between groups.

Results: All test parameters were the same in both groups before stimulation (p<0.050). There were significant improvement in block span, total score and learning score in intervention group after galvanic vestibular stimulation (p<0.050), no significant difference in delayed score (p=0.600). Learning score was improved (p=0.003) and delayed score was deteriorated (p=0.010) in control group. Percentages of block span and total score in intervention group were significantly different compared to the other group (p<0.050).

Conclusion: Galvanic vestibular stimulation improves short-term and long-term spatial memory. This test may inherently have learning effect that is not influenced by stimulation.

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Background and Aim: Most of the researches are about bilingual children with specific language impairment and importance of it in recognition and treatment. This study aimed to assess verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment (SLI) and compare them with normal bilinguals.

Methods: Six bilingual (Azeri and Persian) children with specific language impairment at the age of 7-8 years were collected from clinics of Tehran, Iran. They were evaluated about verb morphology using narrative speech and specific language impairment test and then, compared with six age-matched and six other language-matched children as control group. Children with specific language impairment were diagnosed by exhibiting a significant delay (more than one year) in language that can not be explained by intelligence deficits, hearing loss or visual impairment. We used Man-Whitney test for comparing the groups.

Results: Bilingual children with specific language impairment had delay in comparison with their age-matched group in subject-verb agreement (p=0.020) and articulating tense morphemes (p=0.019). They also had meaningful delay in using proper tense of verbs (past, present, and future) in comparison with language-matched control group (p=0.029).

Conclusion: Comparison of typical development of bilingual children and bilinguals with specific language impairment shows that verb morphology is a good clinical marker for diagnosing and treatment of these children.

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Background and Aim: Non-linear frequency compression is a new feature in hearing instruments compresses the voices of a high-frequency region above a certain cut-off point and transfers them to the lower frequency regions in order to improve the audibility. In this study, we aimed to survey the effect of this feature on the total level of hearing skills of children with profound hearing loss at the age of 3-4 years.

Methods: Twenty two 3-4-years-old children with profound hearing loss were selected with improbable simple sampling. 11 of them had hearing instruments with non-linear frequency compression and 11 had traditional hearing instruments. Tavana test (Jarollahi, 2009) was used to compare the level of hearing skills in these two groups.

Results: Comparison of mean scores of total level of hearing skills in two groups indicated a significant difference (p <0.001). Also, the mean scores of level in all subtests, detection (p=0.022), determination (p=0.005), recognition (p=0.039) and comprehension (p=0.010), showed significant differences.

Conclusion: Using the hearing instruments with non-linear frequency compression would increase the total level of hearing skills in children with profound hearing loss at the ages of 3-4-years and also, in all skill of detection, determination, recognition and comprehension.

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Background and Aim: Discourse-based interventions were studied less in speech therapy. This study aimed to investigate the effects of discourse-based intervention on language disabilities in school-aged children with borderline intelligence quotient (IQ).

Methods: In an experimental study, 33 students at the age of 6-13 years with borderline intelligence quotient (17 students for intervention and 16 students for control group) were selected with available sampling. The intervention lasted 14 sessions (every session: 45 minutes) that focused on the structure and content of discourse. Personal narrative was elicited with explanation of the same topic (go to a trip) for pre- and post-test.

Results: Mean scores of intelligence quotient, age and education had no difference between the two groups. The intervention caused the increase of compound sentences (p=0.038), types of cohesive conjunctions (p=0.003), and related information (p=0.008) and decrease of ungrammatical sentences (p=0.031).

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that participation in the intervention program has a clinically significant effect on the participants' abilities to produce personal narrative.

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Background and Aim: Since utricle is the main damaged organ in benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP) may be an appropriate method to evaluate the utricule dysfunction and the effect of disease recurrence rate on it. This study aimed to record myogenic potential in patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo.

Methods: In a cross-sectional study, ocular myogenic potential was recorded in 25 healthy subjects and 20 patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo using 500 Hz-tone bursts (95 dB nHL).

Results: In the affected ear, mean amplitude was lower and mean threshold was higher than those in the unaffected ear and in the normal group (p<0.05). Mean amplitude asymmetry ratio of patients was more than the healthy subjects (p<0.001). There was no statistical difference between the two groups regarding mean latencies of n10 and p15 (p>0.05). Frequencies of abnormal responses in the affected ears were higher than in unaffected ears and in the normal group (p<0.05). Furthermore, the patients with recurrent vertigo showed more abnormalities than the patients with non-recurrent (p=0.030).

Conclusion: In the recurrent benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential showed more damage in the utricle, suggesting this response could be used to evaluate the patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo.

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Background and Aim: Impairment in language content production, long-term memory and executive function in Parkinson's disease reported in several studies. Identification of these disorders is useful in planning for early interventions. The aim of this study was evaluation of semantic and phonemic clustering and switching in Parkinson's disease.

Methods: In this study, 30 patients with Parkinson's disease and 30 healthy individuals evaluated that were matched by age , sex and educational level . Clustering and switching average were compared between the two groups according to the Troyer method . Data recorded and analyzed using independent t test and Pearson correlation coefficient.

Results: Comparison of mean scores of clustering between patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy individuals indicated significant difference (p=0.05). In addition, significant difference was observed between mean score of switching in two groups (p=0.008).

Conclusion: The finding of the present study reveal that switching between semantic or phonemic subcategory and clustering impaired in patients with Parkinson's disease.

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Background and Aim: Some evidence suggests that hearing impairment has negative effect on psychological characters of hearing-impaired adolescences and they are more vulnerable to mental health problems than their hearing peers are. This was a comparative study of social skills, life satisfaction and external and internal locus of control in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired students.

Methods: T his multi-stage random sampling method consisted of 50 students with hearing impairment (boy and girls) and 50 matched normal-hearing students. The participants completed Matson evaluation of social skills with youngster, students life satisfaction, and Levenson multidimensional locus of control scales.

Results: The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed statistically meaningful differences in social skills , life satisfaction and locus of control between the two groups (p=0.002 for all).

Conclusion: Social skills in normal-hearing students were higher than students with hearing impairment and locus of control in normal student was more internally. Training the parents and school-staff on development of locus of control and making it more internally in hearing-impaired students is suggested.

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Background and Aim: In the process of assessing the nasalance scores in patient’s speech, it is vital to know about normative data in the speech of normal subjects. The main objective in this study was to obtain normative data on nasalance scores in normal Persian-speaking children aged 3.5 to 6.5 years.

Methods: In this cross-sectional and comparative study, nasalance was measured in the speech of 112 children (55 boys and 57 girls) in Tehran, Iran. After auditory screening and speech assessments, the subjects who get the sufficient criterions entered the study. Speech sample was obtained by imitation and repeating sentences (14 oral and 3 nasal sentences) and mean nasalance score was measured by Nasal view software.

Results: A mean nasalance score of 46.25% was obtained for nasal sentences and a mean score of 43.67% for fricative sentences, 43.41% for affricative sentences and 42.21% for stop sentences. There was higher nasalance scores in girls but the difference was not significant (p=0.201) there was a significant difference in nasalance scores between different age groups in stop (p=0.037), fricative (p=0.036) and nasal sentences (p=0.032).

Conclusion: Findings of this study prepared good statistical data about nasalance scores in normal Persian-speaking children aged 3.5-6.5 years. The study also revealed that nasalance scores can be different in sentences with same manner of articulation and can be affected by presence or absence of nasal consonants and even age.

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Background and Aim: Students with borderline intelligence quotient experience types of language disorders that are seen in their narratives, too. This research aimed to investigate the linguistic characteristics of picture-elicited narratives in school-aged children with borderline intelligence quotient.

Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 30 students with borderline intelligence quotient and 25 typically developing children at the age of 6-13 years were randomly selected from a population of four schools. Narrative discourse was elicited with description of pictures of one storybook.

Results: Students with borderline IQ were weaker than typically developing children in complex (p<0.001), compound sentences (p<0.001) and produced more ungrammatical sentences (p=0.007). Students with borderline intelligence quotient produced fewer related (p<0.001) but more unrelated information (p=0.033) and types of cohesive (p=0.010) and "HAM" conjunction (p=0.022) was fewer in them.

Conclusion: Students with borderline intelligence quotient showed more linguistic impairment in description of story.

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Background and Aim: Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder with several speech disorders such as prosodic and pragmatic impairments. Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) based on Albert et al. model (1973) is a rehabilitation method, developed on prosodic features. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of MIT on Persian autistic children’s prosody.

Methods: An easy version of MIT, adopted for Persian language was designed by researchers. Then, after a successful pilot study on a 10-years-old boy for one month, 13 subjects were selected for the main study. All the subjects were autistic, male, right-handed, 7-10-years-old Persian children studied for 48 sessions (16 weeks). Background information gathered from the parents by a questionnaire. As pre- and post-test, some assessments about children’s fundamental frequency (Fº) and intensity of the Persian vowel sounds and declarative and interrogative sentences were accomplished. The data analysis was done using Praat and SPSS softwares.

Results: There was a statistically significant increase in acoustic features, such as intensity, and fundamental frequency of declarative and interrogative sentences also all six vowels of Persian, excluding /â/ and /æ/ (p<0.05 for all).

Conclusion: The widely reported unusual prosody in autistic children was quantified by this study, too. In addition, there was convincing evidence of the positive effects of melodic intonation therapy on acoustic features in Persian autistic children.

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Background and Aim: While most of the people with tinnitus have some degrees of hearing impairment, a small percent of patients admitted to ear, nose and throat clinics or hearing evaluation centers are those who complain of tinnitus despite having normal hearing thresholds. This study was performed to better understanding of the reasons of probable causes of tinnitus and to investigate possible changes in the auditory brainstem function in normal-hearing patients with chronic tinnitus.

Methods: In this comparative cross-sectional, descriptive and analytic study, 52 ears (26 with and 26 without tinnitus) were examined. Components of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) including wave latencies and wave amplitudes were determined in the two groups and analyzed using appropriate statistical methods.

Results: The mean differences between the absolute latencies of waves I, III and V was less than 0.1 ms between the two groups that was not statistically significant. Also, the interpeak latency values of waves I-III, III-V and I-V in both groups had no significant difference. Only, the V/I amplitude ratio in the tinnitus group was significantly higher (p=0.04).

Conclusion: The changes observed in amplitude of waves, especially in the latter ones, can be considered as an indication of plastic changes in neuronal activity and its possible role in generation of tinnitus in normal-hearing patients.

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Background and Aim: Aphasia, after stroke in the left hemisphere, is a common symptom. These patients often experience incomplete recovery despite intensive speech therapy. Direct electrical stimulation of the brain is a technique to stimulate the brain in patients with neurological and psychiatric diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of this stimulation on recovery of naming ability, working memory, and aphasia quotient and the lasting duration in patients with non-fluent aphasia.

Methods: In this interventional study, 10 patients with after-stroke non-fluent aphasia were enrolled. Their aphasia quotient, working memory and naming ability scores were compared before and after sham and real treatments and two months after the real treatment. 10 sessions of 20-minutes sham electrical stimulation and 10 sessions of 20-minutes anodic and cathodic stimulation (2 mA) at the dorsal lateral perifrontal cortex was done for each patient. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA and Friedman nonparametric tests.

Results: The ability of naming and working memory scores were increased significantly after treatment and two months after it compared with before study and after sham treatment (p<0.05 for all). There was no significant improvement in aphasia quotient.

Conclusion: The transcranial direct current stimulation can sustain improvement in naming function and working memory in patients with non-fluent aphasia. It can be used in the rehabilitation program of these patients.

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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.

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Background and Aim: Setting of candidates for a word with similar beginnings is known as the Cohort size. Despite the importance of the number and properties of candidates in word recognition, so far, in none of the tests made for Persian language, the Cohort size is considered. The purpose of current study was the introduction of importance of Cohort size in word recognition and calculation of Cohort size for the list of Persian high-frequency spondee words.

Methods: The spondee words extracted from high-frequency Persian word store. Then, total spondee words with same first syllable in Amid Persian dictionary recorded and Cohort size calculated for each spondee word. Thus, the list of high-frequency spondee words with their Cohort size composed of 4121 words obtained.

Results: The Cohort sizes of word had a wide range from 0 to 87. In the half of the words, the Cohort sizes were less than 14 and in the rest were more than it.

Conclusion: The Cohort size affects the time course and precision of decision making about words. Persian words are not equal in Cohort size. For having more controlled test materials to develop and design different types of auditory tests, it is possible to consider the Cohort size of words along other effective factors.

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Background and Aim : Theory of mind refers to the ability to understand the others have mental states that can be different from one's own mental states or facts. This study aimed to investigate the relationship of theory of mind and executive functions in normal hearing, deaf, and cochlear-implanted children.

Methods: The study population consisted of normal, deaf and cochlear-implanted girl students in Mashhad city, Iran. Using random sampling, 30 children (10 normal, 10 deaf and 10 cochlear-implanted) in age groups of 8-12 years old were selected. To measure the theoty of mind, theory of mind 38-item scale and to assess executive function, Coolidge neuropsychological and personality test was used. Research data were analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient, analysis of variance and Kruskal-Wallis tests.

Results: There was a significant difference between the groups in the theory of mind and executive function subscales, organization, planning-decision-making, and inhibition. Between normal and deaf groups (p=0.01), as well as cochlear-implanted and deaf groups (p=0.01), there was significant difference in planning decision-making subscale. There was not any significant relationship between the theory of mind and executive functions generally or the theory of mind and executive function subscales in these three groups independently.

Conclusion: Based on our findings, cochlear-implanted and deaf children have lower performance in theory of mind and executive function compared with normal hearing children.

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Background and Aim: Speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses were used in the assessment of subcortical encoding of the speech stimuli in the English language. These processes are affected by language background and experiences. Considering the language specific acoustic differences, the aim of current study was establishing the response norms in adult Persian-speakers and comparing the encoding of the speech syllable /da/ between Persian and English languages.

Methods: Auditory brainstem responses to speech syllable /da/ in the right ear, gained from 48 normal adults (25 women and 23 men) with the mean age of 22.70 with SD 2.05 years were recorded. After characterizing the onset elements, transition from consonant to vowel, the periodic portion and offset of response, the Persian dataset were compared with 95% confidence interval norms in the age range of 18-28 years.

Results: The response to speech syllable /da/ was successfully recorded in all of the subjects and main features of response were highly overlapped with published English norms.

Conclusion: Normative values for speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses in adult Persian speakers are presented in the current survey. Our findings suggest that the recommended procedure and more importantly, the scoring method based on English norms can be used in Persian speakers without replacing the original synthetic vowel /da/.

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Background and Aim: Auditory-perceptual assessment of voice a main approach in the diagnosis and therapy improvement of voice disorders. Despite, there are few Iranian studies about auditory-perceptual assessment of voice. The aim of present study was development and determination of validity and rater reliability of Persian version of the Consensus Auditory Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE -V).

Methods: The qualitative content validity was detected by collecting 10 questionnaires from 9 experienced speech and language pathologists and a linguist. For reliability purposes, the voice samples of 40 dysphonic (neurogenic, functional with and without laryngeal lesions) adults (20-45 years of age) and 10 normal healthy speakers were recorded. The samples included sustain of vowels and reading the 6 sentences of Persian version of the consensus auditory perceptual evaluation of voice called the ATSHA.

Results: The qualitative content validity was proved for developed Persian version of the consensus auditory perceptual evaluation of voice. Cronbach’s alpha was high (0.95). Intra-rater reliability coefficients ranged from 0.86 for overall severity to 0.42 for pitch inter-rater reliability ranged from 0.85 for overall severity to 0.32 for pitch (p<0.05).

Conclusion: The ATSHA can be used as a valid and reliable Persian scale for auditory perceptual assessment of voice in adults.

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Background and Aim: Auditory and visual processing along with phonological and visual spatial working memory are the problems that patients with dyslexia struggle with. So, the aim of this project was to investigate the effectiveness of computerized cognitive training on the working memory performance of children with dyslexia.

Methods: The study conducted under the quasi-experimental method with pre- and post-test along with the control group. 25 children with dyslexia aged 7 to 12 years in grades 1-5 assigned to the experimental (15) and control (10) groups the experimental group received 30 sessions of the Brain Ware Safari intervention program. NAMA scale and Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) were conducted to assess reading and working memory performance of the subjects. MANCOVA, ANCOVA and effect sizes were utilized to analyze the data.

Results: There were significant differences between pre- and post-tests of the experimental and control groups on the forward and backward block recall subtests of WMTB-C and not the mazes memory. Regarding the subscales of NAMA scale, we found no significant differences in the reading performance but analysis of effect sizes showed positive effects at least on the 6 subscales.

Conclusion: The Brain Ware Safari computerized cognitive training can improve visual spatial working memory of children with dyslexia and probably may affect the reading performance.

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Background and Aim: Hearing impairment can have an impact on adolescents’ quality of life and can lead to their isolation and depression. The main purpose of this research was to study the effectiveness of a mental rehabilitation program based on positive thinking skills training on increasing happiness in a group of hearing impaired girls and boys.

Methods: In this experimental study, pre- and post-test plan with a control group was used. All of the hearing impaired students (girls and boys) in all high schools of southern parts of Tehran, Iran, in year 2012-13 were our statistical research community. 48 hearing impaired girls and boys were selected by multistage sampling including stratified, purposive, and random sampling. They were randomly divided into two groups of experimental and control. Each group consists of 12 boys and 12 girls. Positive thinking skills were trained to experimental groups during eight 45-minutes sessions, twice a week. We used the Oxford happiness questionnaire to assess the level of happiness.

Results: Using analysis of covariance showed that positive thinking skills training had meaningful and positive effect on increasing happiness of hearing impaired boys and girls in the experimental groups (p<0.01). Also, the mean happiness scores of boys and girls were meaningfully different (p<0.01).

Conclusion: Positive thinking skills training increases the happiness scores of hearing impaired adolescents. So, the approach taken in this study can be considered as an appropriate method for psychological-education interventions, counseling and treatment in hearing impaired adolescent.

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Background and Aim: It is not known how electrocochleography components of action potentials (AP) and summating potentials (SP) are changed in response to CE-chirp stimulus using extra-tympanic electrodes. This study was done for comparing summating potentials and action potentials specifications in response to CE-chirp and click stimuli.

Methods: Electrocochleography components of action potentials and summating potentials were recorded in 16 normal hearing subjects (8 men and 8 women) aged 22-30 years (mean: 26.7 with SD 2.5 years) with audiometric (250-8000 Hz) hearing thresholds of 15 dB HL or better in response to click and CE-chirp stimulus at 90 dB nHL. Amplitude, duration, latency and area of summating potentials and action potentials and SP/AP amplitude and area ratios were compared.

Results: Among the measured parameters, action potentials amplitude in response to CE-chirp stimulus (0.41 with SD 0.26 µV ) was significantly smaller than action potentials amplitude in response to click (0.61 with SD 0.29 µV ) stimulus (p<0.005). Relative frequency of detecting summating potentials in response to CE-chirp (68.7%) was lower than (100%) click (p<0.005).

Conclusion: Recording electrocochleography component of summating potentials and action potentials with CE-chirp stimulus at high intensity level in normal hearing individuals shows no advantage over click stimulus. Small amplitude of summating potentials as a major problem of extra-tympanic electrocochleography cannot be solved using CE-chirp stimulus.