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: Social interaction plays an essential role in acquisition of speech and language as one of the most important developmental factors. The recent studies indicated that language abilities have a close relationship to social skills. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship of development of expressive language and dimensions of social skills in 4-6-years-old Persian-speaking children.
Methods: In this study, 123 normal Persian-speaking 4-6-year-old children (76 boys and 47 girls) who had all the specific criteria for normality were randomly selected from several preschools in Shiraz, Iran. During the first stage of testing, test of language development (TOLD) was administered to investigate language development of participants later, the social skills rating system (SSRS) including the teachers&apos and parents&apos forms were completed by the parents and teachers of participants. The data were analyzed using Pearson&aposs correlation coefficients.
Results: The correlations between expressive language and dimensions of social skills were significant (p<0.001), but teachers&apos form had a greater correlation with language development (p=0.031). Besides, Pearson&aposs correlations between teachers&apos and parents&apos forms was not significant (p=0.27).
Conclusion: According to our results, expressive language develops along with social skills development. On the other hand, these results are based on the differences between home and educational environment in social skills achievements of children. These findings are to be considered to provide crucial training in both environments for the children to improve the development of their expressive language.

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.