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Background and Aim: Sustained attention refers to the ability to maintain attention in target stimuli over a sustained period of time. This study was conducted to develop a Persian version of the sustained auditory attention capacity test and to study its results in normal children.
Methods: To develop the Persian version of the sustained auditory attention capacity test, like the original version, speech stimuli were used. The speech stimuli consisted of one hundred monosyllabic words consisting of a 20 times random of and repetition of the words of a 21-word list of monosyllabic words, which were randomly grouped together. The test was carried out at comfortable hearing level using binaural, and diotic presentation modes on 46 normal children of 7 to 11 years of age of both gender.
Results: There was a significant difference between age, and an average of impulsiveness error score (p=0.004) and total score of sustained auditory attention capacity test (p=0.005). No significant difference was revealed between age, and an average of inattention error score and attention reduction span index. Gender did not have a significant impact on various indicators of the test.
Conclusion: The results of this test on a group of normal hearing children confirmed its ability to measure sustained auditory attention capacity through speech stimuli.

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Background and Aim: The birth of a hearing-impaired child and raising him/her often brings special psychological feelings for parents, especially mothers who spend more time with the child. This study aimed to compare the general health status in mothers of hearing-impaired and hearing children.

Methods: This was a descriptive-analytic study. General Health Questionnaire was used to identify general health status and data were analyzed with independent-t test.

Results: The general health level of mothers of hearing-impaired children was lower than mothers of normal hearing children (p=0.01 ). The average scores of anxiety (p=0.01), depression (p= 0.01) and physical (p=0.02) symptoms and social function (p=0.01) of mothers of hearing-impaired children was higher than mothers of normal hearing ones (p=0.01).

Conclusion: Having a child with hearing impairment affects mothers’ general health status. Our findings show that it’s necessary to provide psychological and social support for mothers of hearing-impaired children.

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Background and Aim: Developing appropriate curriculum for the education of deaf children depends on identifying the needs of this group. We aimed to examine educational rehabilitating needs of hearing-impaired children from the point of view of their parents.

Methods: In this descriptive survey study, data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire completed by 64 parents of deaf children.

Results: Parents expressed that fitness of training with the students in school, willingness to participate in the program, and the use of a uditory-verbal therapy as a good way were the main notification preferences to families of hearing-impaired children, exceptional centers, and advertisements. They emphesied that lack of appropriate facilities, children's pertinacity, and their lack of cooperation prevented the implementation of training programs and curriculum in educational centers and home. Good verbal communication and speech was as the parents' first priority expectation of their child at the end of course. There was a significant difference between parents' opinions about the educational needs and rehabilitation (p<0.05). No significant difference was seen between the parents' suggestions about educational problems of hearing-impaired children (p>0.05). Also, there was no significantly association between the gender of child or the educational level of parents with the parents' view.

Conclusion: It seems that parents should be supported by training workshops and consulting. Also, most of the children in this study were trained auditory-verbally and the results do not mean that other educational and rehabilitation methods have not the discussed characteristics.

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Background and Aim: Concerning the important role of parents of hearing-impaired children in auditory-verbal therapy, this study mainly focused on preparing a Persian version of the “Parental needs questionnaire” and analyzing its validity and reliability.

Methods: First, the original English version of the questionnaire “the needs of hearing-impaired Children’s Parents in Auditory-Verbal Therapy” translated to Persian, based on the approved translation protocol of International Quality of Life Assessment by world health organization. Then, the Persian version presented to seven experts for validating the content and their feedbacks were applied into the questionnaire. Finally, the questionnaire presented to parents of 51 hearing-impaired children who attend in auditory-verbal therapy, and the collected results were analyzed statistically.

Results: The overall mean of content validity index in 32 items of the questionnaire was 0.87. The overall Cronbach’s alpha of this questionnaire was 0.86 in the test and 0.99 in the re-test phases.

Conclusion: Based on the obtained results, the Persian version of the questionnaire has a satisfactory content validity and reliability and could be used in clinics and medical centers for analysis of parental needs.

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Backgrand and Aim: The measurement of speech intelligibility refer to determining the measure of speech intelligibility in communication. The speech intelligibility is used for decision-making in intervention, the determination of intervention goals, and the measurement of intervention outcomes. This study aimed to investigate the speech intelligibility among the children aged 36 to 60 months.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 360 healthy children (180 girls and 180 boys) were chosen among children of kindergardens in Khorramabad city, Iran. Speech sample of subjects was collected by calling pictures of Hydari et al 2010, speech intelligibility measurement test (2010). The voices of the subjects were tape-recorded and speech intelligibility of children was studied within 12 age-groups arranged by two months.

Results: The minimum speech intelligibility was concerned to 36 and 37 months old and the maximum was concerned to 58 and 59 months old. There was a significant differences among age-group 36 and 37 months old with 44 and 45 months old and above, age-group 38 and 39 months old with 55 and 54 months old and above, and age-group 40 and 41 months old with 58 and 59 months old (p<0.05 for all). There was no significant difference among other age groups. There was no significant difference between boys and girls.

Conclusion: Speech intelligibility has the highest growth during the age of 36 to 46 months and it had lowest growth during the age of 46 months and elder range.

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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: 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: 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: During speech development in normal children, cluster reduction is one of the natural phonological processes. Children begin to produce some consonant clusters from the age of 2 years but ability to produce all consonant clusters continues up to 9. The main objective of this investigation was assessing the ability of Persian-speaking children in production of consonant clusters in mono-syllable CVCC words.

Methods: In this cross-sectional and comparative study, production of 19 clusters with stop, fricative, affricate, nasal, and glide consonants in 38 words were tested in 200 Persian-speaking children at the age of 3 to 6 years in kindergartens of Tehran, Iran. Content validity indexes of 38 words were above 0.80 and Cronbach’s alpha of split half was 0.91.

Results: More than 75% of 3-years-old children were able to produce /xl/, /bz/, /rs/, and /xm/ clusters. Age was positively correlated with correct production scores of words (p=0.001) and was negatively correlated with cluster reduction scores (p=0.001).

Conclusion: Three-years-old normal Persian-speaking children may use cluster reduction in words with consonant clusters but this phonological process decreased by increasing of age so, most of the 6-years-old children could produce consonant clusters correctly. Place of articulation more than manner of articulation affect on correct production of consonant clusters.

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Background and Aim: The different studies in normal children and those with developmental language disorders showed the relationship between language and development of theory of mind (ToM). But, there is not agreement between authors about role of language aspects (lexicon, semantic, syntax, and pragmatics) in development of theory of mind. The aim of this review article was the study of relationship of aspects of language and development of theory of mind in normal children and those with developmental language disorder.

Methods: This study was a narrative review. The Persian and English published articles during 1995 to 2012 were searched from different websites [Cochreane library, Proquest, Springer, Ebsco, Sciencedirect, PubMed, Magiran and Scientific Information Database (SID)]. Keywords included theory of mind, language, syntax, syntactic complement, semantic, lexicon and pragmatics. Then, the titles and abstracts of the related articles about relationship between language and theory of mind were selected and studied.

Conclusion: The language is the most important factor and predictor of theory-of-mind development. Although, lexicon, semantics, pragmatics and general language were important in development of theory of mind, but most of the articles had stressed the role of syntactic complements (sentences with mental or communicative verbs) in its development in normal children and children with developmental language disorders. As syntactic complements are necessary prerequisites for development of theory of mind, particularly for false belief concept, it is predicted that focus on training these aspects in children with developmental language disorders can influence on both theory of mind development and language complexity.

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Background and Aim: Children with auditory processing disorders and impaired phonological working memory have difficulty in storing an accurate phonological representation of speech.

Therefore, it is highly important to assess phonological working memory in this population. One of the methods in assessing phonological working memory is to use a non-sense syllable test. The aim of this study is to create a valid and reiable non-sense syllable test in order to evaluate phonological working memory in Persian speaking children with auditory processing disorders.

Methods: In this cross sectional comparative study, 40 non-sense syllable words were developed according to the criteria of non-syllable word construction and under supervision of a linguistic specialist. The non-sense syllable test was assessed in 53 boys and 47 girls from 7 to 10 years of age. The content validity of the non-sense syllable words was assessed by experts. To evaluate the validity of the test, correlation between the results of the test and forward digit recall and backward digit recall tests were measured. The non-sense syllable test was performed twice to evaluate its relaibility.

Results: The validity of the non-sense syllable test was 95.5 (SD=2). The correlation coefficient between non-sense syllable repetition, forward digit recall, and backward digit recal l tests were 0.76 and 0.75 respectively (p<0.001). The correlation coefficient between different performances of non-sense syllable tests was 0.8 (p<0.001).

Conclusion: These findings show that the non-sense syllable repetition test can be used to evaluate phonological working memory in Persian speaking children from 7-10 years of age.

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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.

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Background and Aim: Cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) is one of the diagnostic tests used in assessing vestibular function. Two aims of this study were to investigate implications of cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential in children with spastic cerebral palsy (7-12 years), and to compare vestibular function in these children and normal children.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, myogenic potential was recorded in 31 children with spastic cerebral palsy (8 girls, 23 boys,7-12 years of age, with mean age of 8.77 years old and standard deviation of 1.52 years) and 31 normal children (13 girls, 18 boys with mean age of 8.77 years and standard deviation of 1.52 years). Cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential was recorded with 500 Hz tone burst. The recorded parameters included p13 and n23 latency, p13-n23 pick to pick amplitude, and threshold.

Results: Myogenic Potential was recorded in 31 normal children. They had bilateral responses. In children with cerebral palsy, 21 children showed bilateral responses, 3 children had only right-sided responses, 8 children had only left-sided responses, and two children did not show any responses. The statistical significant differences were shown between the two groups in n23, p13-n23 pick to pick amplitude, and threshold (p<0.05).

Conclusion: These findings showed that cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential can be used in children with cerebral palsy. There were significant differences in myogenic potential parameters between the two groups. More studies are needed to investigate the causes of these differences.

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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.

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Background and Aim: Grammatical skills development of hearing-impaired children depends on using appropriate educational rehabilitation programs. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of linguistic plays on the grammatical skills in hearing-impaired children with hearing aids.

Methods: Ten hearing-impaired children with hearing aids, aged between 5 and 7, were randomly assigned to two groups (5 children in each group). Each treatment group received 12 sessions on linguistic plays. The grammatical skills of these children were evaluated via the TOLD-P: 3 (Persian version) in addition, their level of intelligence was assessed by the Raven test.

Results: The difference between the scores of both control and treatment groups revealed a statistically significant difference in grammatical skills (t=7.61, p=0.001) and three subskills of the children who participated in the linguistic plays. These subskills include syntactic understanding (t=3.16, p=0.013), sentence imitation (t=1.71, p=0.006), and morphological completion (t=6.55, p=0.001). In other words, the findings suggest that linguistic plays have a significant impact on the improvement of the aforementioned skills in hearing-impaired children.

Conclusion: Results suggest that it would be beneficial to include linguistic plays as part of routine rehabilitation programs as a means of improving the grammatical difficulties of children. After partaking in linguistic plays, children significantly improved their ability to comprehend the meaning of sentences and also to recognize, understand, and use common Persian morphological forms.

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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.

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Background and Aim: Although double dichotic digit test is a useful tool for assessing the central auditory system in adults, it is more useful for evaluating younger children. The present study aimed to develop the Persian version of the single dichotic digit test and to obtain initial normative data.

Methods: The Persian version of the present test consisted of three different sets of 25 single digit pairs for testing in the free recall, directed recall to right, and directed recall to left conditions. The digits in each list were recorded dichotically on a compact disc. The sectional study was performed on 126 male students, aged between 7 and 9. The test-retest reliability was assessed in 29 subjects two to four weeks after the first test session.

Results: In seven year olds, the mean right and left ear scores increased from around 95.79% and 89.69%, respectively. In eight year olds, the mean right and left ear scores increased from around 98.59% and 96.29%, respectively. The mean right ear advantage decreased from around 6.13% in 7 year olds to around 2% in 8 year olds (p=0.001). No significant difference was found in scores between the free recall and directed recall conditions (p>0.05). The test had a high test-retest reliability (p>0.05).

Conclusion: The Persian version of the test has a high test-retest reliability for evaluating male children aged between 7 and 9 it can be used for assessing binaural integration in male children of this age group.

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Background and Aim: Various studies indicate that deaf children compared with hearing children have problems in all aspects of emotional development, including facial expression, emotional understanding of display rules, mixed and contradictory emotions and theory of mind. This article reviews studies of impaired emotional development in children with hearing impairment.

Recent Findings: Some findings indicate that young deaf children function similar to hearing children. The difficulty in understanding display rules experienced by deaf children can be explained by appealing to their inability to adequately express emotions in emotion-eliciting contexts, as opposed to their difficulty in understanding mental states. Overall, research findings indicate that emotional understanding in various aspects and dimensions is associated with children's language abilities.

Conclusion: Results obtained show that more aspects of deaf children 's emotional development (such as interpretation and recognition of facial expression) are similar to that of their peers. However, deaf children performed more poorly in tasks which required experience in understanding display rules and theory of mind . Recent findings generally demonstrate that language plays an important role in the emotional development of children. Therefore, deaf children in comparison to hearing children are less able performers.

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Background and Aim: Deaf children face many psychological problems due to their inability to hear. The present study investigates the effectiveness of art therapy (painting) in reducing the hopelessness and solitude experienced by these children.

Methods: An experimental design with pre- and post-testing and a control group was used. Multi-stage method was used for selecting 30 children with hearing impairment (age range: 7-10 years) from Isfahan. Subjects were randomly appointed to experimental and control groups. Data was collected using Kazdin hopelessness scale and Asher solitude scale. Analysis of covariance statistical method was used to analyze the data.

Results: Findings indicated a significant difference between feelings of hopelessness and solitude of deaf children in experimental and control groups (p<0.001).

Conclusion: From these findings it can be concluded that art therapy decreases the rate of hopelessness and solitude in deaf children and can be applied as an educational and therapeutic method.

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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.