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Back ground and aim: Osteoporosis, a multifactor disease characterized by reduction of bone mass. It is a major cause of fractures especially femoral fractures leading to morbidity, mortality and decreased quality of life. Although there is no known cure, osteoporosis and related fractures are largely preventable. Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) are the important components of any effective preventive program.The purpose of this investigation was to determine the level of KAP of osteoporosis among a group of Iranian adolescent females.

Materials and Methods: A descriptive study was conducted to determine the KAP level of osteoporosis on 626 randomly selected school girls aged 10-19 (13.9±1.4) years coming from rural and urban regions of Tehran and  other provinces to students' camp in north of Tehran. A designed questionnaire with four parts containing questions regarding demographic information, knowledge, attitude and practice was used in this study. Questions were made based on YES/NO and Don't Know in knowledge and attitude (this third option allowed the respondent a choice without guessing) and just Yes /No related to the practice. Students were asked to read the guidelines and then to complete the questionnaire when they were in the camp. We descript +2 for correct responses, 0 for incorrect responses and +1 for don't know answers. The ethical committee of the Iran University of Medical Sciences & Health services approved the study. The SPSS version 11.5 statistical software was used for analysis. ANOVA, Pearson and student t-test were performed to compare mean values and significant P- value was considered at P<0.05.

 Results: The total score of KAP was 2-65(43.3±13.8) .In details a range between 14-30(23±2.9), 10-22(19.2±2.4) and 2-18(10.1±2.8) were seen in knowledge, attitude and practice respectively. There was a direct correlation between total score of KAP and parents' education. Students' Knowledge and attitude, and also attitude and practice had a positive correlation. There were no relationship between parents' occupation, family number and total score of KAP.

 Conclusion: Iranian adolescent females would have relevant knowledge about osteoporosis but attitude and practice of them were less than knowledge. We recommend to perform further training programs to increase practice of Iranian young women about osteoporosis.

 

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Background and Aim: Naming test is an appropriate tool for assessing, diagnosing and treating word finding difficulties in Aphasic patients. Considering the importance of this test and lack of such kinds of tests in the field of verb in Farsi, the purpose of this research is to provide a verb-naming test in Persian.
Materials and Methods: In order to provide the tool based on the foreign samples, the common traits are exploited according to selection the verbs and based on the frequency criteria, Acquisition age, length of word, and investigating the inferior studies, 132 Persian verbs were chosen and picture of the selected verbs were drawn. They were offered to 15 experts to give points to the pictures based on the previous criteria of our research including familiarity, imagination and beauty of viewing. The mean score of obtained points was computed and 50 verbs were selected out of 132 suggested verbs.
Results: Findings of this study showed that the selected verbs were of high frequency verbs. Also they are those verbs which have lowers acquisition age. Most of the verbs were compound and it indicates that in Persian language compound verbs are of high frequency. Moreover, it appeared that high objectivity degree caused to high scores of imagination. Then most of the verbs were objective verbs.
Conclusion: Finally 50 verbs with their related pictures made this naming test. It is worth mentioning that remaining verbs were ranked based on their scores.

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Background and Aim: Impairment of noun retrieval is common among aphasic patients, but some of previous studies represent differences between noun retrieval ability of various aphasia syndromes. Current study investigates and compares the picture naming ability of 4 patients with fluent and non-fluent aphasia. 

Materials and Methods: Present study investigated the naming ability of 2 fluent and 2 non-fluent aphasic patients with oral picture naming test. This test contains line drawing of 109 nouns. Patients were asked to name each picture with a single word. Responses were classified according to Philadelphia Naming Test scoring system as correct and semantic, formal, mixed, non-word, unrelated and others error (no response, description/circumlocution, miscellaneous error). Then, the data were investigated in terms of descriptive statistics and analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test.

Results: The score of non-fluent aphasics was more than fluent ones. The percentage of semantic errors in fluent group and no responses among non-fluent patients were more than the other types. Despite of personal differences, all error types were found in responses of patients. The difference between score and error types in fluent and non-fluent patients was not significant (p .05).

Conclusion: This scoring system can define a variety of word retrieval errors. The fluent aphasics have more noun retrieval problems than non-fluent patients. Although, there are differences between two groups, but error type in picture naming is not a precise factor for distinguish between various aphasia syndromes and there is similarity in impaired underling mechanisms and naming behavior of them.    

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Background and Aim: In some disorders, word finding is difficult. There is different ways to assess naming process that verbal fluency is one way. So far has not been an index to verbal fluency assessment and treatment, the aim of this study was to determine normative data of semantic fluency for 18-69 -year – old adult Persian speakers.
Materials and Methods: This study was cross sectional and analytic. Participants were 540 normal adults 18-69 -year – old. They were divided in 4 age groups ( 18-30, 31-43, 44-56, 57-69) and 3 educational groups (0-8, 9-12, >12). The peoples were asked to name animals and fruits in 60 seconds, words were recorded and analyzed whit Troyer method and SPSS 16 software.
Results: The findings of this study did not show significant differences in semantic verbal fluency, clusters mean and number of switches between two genders. But significant differences were found in semantic verbal fluency (P=0.000) and number of switching (P=0.000) between educational groups. Also significant differences were found in semantic verbal fluency (P=0.014), clusters (P=0.000) mean and number of switching (P=0.000) between age groups.
Conclusion: Semantic verbal fluency and number of switching increase by promoting the education but decrease by rising of participant age. Clusters mean increase by rising of participant but the education had not significant effect. Gender had no effect on none of them. The findings of this study are consistent with other studies and difference in findings in some of studies, could cause of different in educational and age partitions.

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Background and Aim: Semantic test "Pyramid and Palm Trees"(PPT) Test was used for assessing cognition and semantic system in brain disorders, semantic dementia, Alzheimer disease and aphasia. This test was designed in 1992 by Howard and Patterson and includes both versions picture and word. It has validity and reliability. The aim of this study is to determine of validity and reliability of Persian picture version "Pyramids and Palm Trees" Test and compare with aphasia and normal adults.

Materials and Methods: In this cross - sectional study, 45 subjects included 15 Aphasia and 30 normal adults respectively the mean age and standard deviation of 53 (7.77), 53 (7.91) years participated. All of participants were matched in the age and sex, and education and bilingualism. In the first stage, the picture version PPT had given to 14 expert(11 Speech and language pathologists, 3 Linguists) in order to determine content and face validity. According to their comments, pictures that were very far from Persian culture were replaced with proportional pictures with Persian culture. Then the reliability was calculated by performance of PPT during an interval of 5-7 days in two stages for all of aphasia patients. In order to compare of results, PPT was performed on normal adults. Then, the results were analyzed by SPSS18 software. The statistic tests were included of lavashh correlation for validity, Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) for reliability and independent T-Test for comparison of scores mean of picture version PPT between aphasia and normal adults.

Results: ICC ranges for reliability were 0.88 – 0.93. Also difference of scores mean of picture version PPT between aphasia and normal adults were significant (p<0.05).

Conclusion: The Persian version PPT have validity and reliability. This study showed semantic disorder in aphasia patients in compared with normal adults. 

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Abstract

Background and Aim: The human needs speech for making relationship, he achieves speech with linguistic structure including sound, word and more important than other the sentence. In Persian grammar, there are different types of sentences including: imperative, question, active, passive, exclamation. A childe makes sentence with single-word, telegraphic speech and then with composing names and verbs and propositions in his stage of growing and finally he expresses the passive, conditional, compound sentences. Because of no previous study has been done about the age of comprehension passive sentences in Persian language so we decided to run the comprehension passive sentences on normal children. And we got the age of growth about it in normal children then we compared it in hearing impaired children. The aim of this study was to compare for comprehension passive sentences in normal children 3 to8 years old with hearing impaired children 8years old.

Materials and Methods: A total of 691 normal children 3 to 8 years old in central Tehran and 18 hearing impaired children in special schools participated in this test. At first the test was conducted on 30 children, and proved its reliability. This test had 15sets of three pictures and child must show one of those three pictures. At first, two sets of three pictures were performed to child as example and practice then the passive sentence was expressed about it Colloquial and child must show it and if he/she couldn’t ,the examiner showed the correct picture and showed next picture as be offered to children should be familiar with the test. The child was described that he/she looked at pictures carefully and showed the correct picture after reviewing all the pictures. In continue, 15 pictures of this test were executes and examiner recorded the results.

Results: The highest number of correct responses were for normal children 8years old (Average: 13.93) and other records were in order for children 7 years old (Average: 12.51), 6 years old (Average: 9.37), 5 years old (Average: 8.09), 4 yeas old (Average: 5.31), 3 years old (Average: 3.61) and the lowest record of correct responses was for the hearing impaired children. The result of this study showed that there is a significant relationship among the ability of comprehension passive sentences and age, birth order, parents education (p<0.05) but there is no significant relationship between ability of comprehension passive sentences and their gender (p>0.05) and there is a significant deference between the average of percentage of responses and comprehension passive sentences in hearing impaired children in all the range of ages except 3 years old (p=1.000). It means that hearing impaired children in comprehension passive sentences are similar to children 3 years old.

Conclusion: The result of this study showed there is a significant relationship among the ability of comprehension passive sentences and age, birth order, parents education but there is no significant relationship between ability of comprehension passive sentences and their gender. The results of this study showed the ability of comprehension passive sentences in hearing impaired children 8 years old is like normal children 3 years old too.

Keywords: Passive sentences, Comprehension, Normal children, Severe hearing loss, The Persian language

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Background and Aim: “Executive function” is a term describing the processes required for conscious control of thought, emotion, and action that have centered role in management of one's day-to-day life. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between executive function and performance on selected linguistic tasks in persons with aphasia (PWA) and left frontal lobe lesions.

  

Materials and Methods : Subjects were 12 right-handed, left hemisphere stroke patients and 12 normal adults as control group. Farsi aphasia test were administered to determine of persence and type of aphasia, as well as auditory comperehension(AC) and naming scors. Wisconsin Card Sort Test(WCST) and Tower Of London(TOL) were used to assess the executive function skills of planning, working memory, mental flexibility, self monitoring, inhibition irrelevant behavior, shifting between concept and action.

 

Results: The control group scored higher than the individuals with aphasia on the executive function tests (P<0/001). In WCST there was not a significant correlation between the AC and category completed (CC) as well as preservative errors(PE). There was a significant correlation between the AC and total errors (TE) (p=0/02) . There was a significant correlation between naming and CC (p=0/01) and TE (p=0/005). There was not a significant correlation when comparing the naming and PE (p=0/194). A comparison between naming scores and TOL showed a significant correlation (p=0/009). There was not a significant correlation between AC and TOL (p=0/113).

  

Conclusion: This study showed that individuals with aphasia have cognition disorder, other than language disorder. If they have a good naming ability, patients ' performance ontestsof executive function will be better.

 

Keywords: Aphasia, Executive function, Language function, Naming, Auditory comprehension, Persian Language

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  Background and Aim: Speech in noise test (SINT) surveys the ability of person in extracting speech from ambient noise. Temporal resolution (TR) is ability of person to understand changes of stimulus over time that has important role in speech perception. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of age and sex on SINT and TR in individuals with normal hearing.

  

  Materials and Methods: SINT was done in the most comfortable level in 3 SNRs 0,-10 and -20 dB and Gap detection test (GDT) in 4 intensity levels in two age groups 25-40 yrs old (included 14 persons) and 41 -55 yrs old ( included 15 persons).

  

  Results: There was a significant difference between word recognition scores (WRSs) in quiet and in the presence of noise in each age group (P<0.0001). Significant difference was shown between two age groups in WRS s in two SINs of - 10 and- 20 dB (P≤0.02). WRS difference between silence and 3 SINs in two sexes was significant (P≤0.04). Significant difference was the revealed between GDT thresholds in 4 intensity levels (P<0.0001). Sex and age had no effects on GDT thresholds .

  

  Conclusions: According to our results, despite of normal hearing thresholds with increasing age WRS and GDT are reduced. It seems that, WRS and speech perception in female are better than male.

  

  Key words: Speech in Noise Test, Temporal Resolution, Age, Sex

 

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Background and Aim: A Concrete and Abstract Word Synonym Test is a test which assessed semantic system in patients with acquired language disorder specifically semantic impairment. The aim of this study is to design a valid and reliable test for assessment of comprehension of concrete and abstract words in different types of aphasia.

 

Materials and Methods: The type of study is test construction and was computed as cross-sectional. First, a collection of words based on frequency were chosen in order to construct the test. These words were given to 15 experts (10 speech and language pathologists and 5 linguists) in 3 stages, in order to rate words with 0-100 scale. Then words, which had higher average than 90 score were chosen. After determining face and content validity, the test was performed on subjects. Subjects included 20 aphasic patients (12 men and 8 women) and 50 normal people (28 men and 22 women) ranging in age from 20 to 65 years. After 5 to 7 days, to determine reliability of test, test was performed on subjects again. Results of this study were analyzed by SPSS 16.

 

Results: Results showed that this test has a higher validity than %90. Coronbach alpha for internal consistency was 0.500. For investigation of test-retest reliability, mean difference of test scores in 2 stages of administration was significance (p<0.038). Pearson correlation coefficient between mean scores of patients in 2stages were 0.857 and ICC range was 0.857-0.923 that was significant (p<0.001). The cut of point of test was also 46. Comparison of mean scores of concrete and abstract word synonym test in patients and normal people and also in patient with temporal lesion showed significant difference (p<0.001).

 

Conclusion: A Concrete and Abstract Word Synonym Test is a proper tool for assessing semantic system in aphasic patients and it can indicate semantic impairment in these patients.

 

Keywords: Synonym comprehension test, Concrete and abstract words, Validity, Reliability, Aphasia, Semantic impairment.

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Background and Aim: Semantic test “pyramids and palm trees” (PPT) are the most common tests for assessing memory. Since this test is related to language and culture, normative data in different populations are needed. This study was done in Persian language.

Materials and Methods: Current study was cross-sectional and was done in 270 male and female from 20 to 69 years old. After performing Mini-Mental Status Examination test, Persian version of PPT was done. Subjects must select a picture or word between two pictures or words that was closer to target. First picture version was performed and then word version was carried out after 10 to 14 days. Data was analyzed by Spss16 software and the statistic tests were included of T-Test and a Paired T-Test and ANOVA.

Results: The Results show that difference between picture and word scores increased with rising age. There were significant differences in gender between scores of picture and word version (male P<0.001, female P=0.003). It also points out the difference increases between picture and word scores with education. 

Conclusion: Both versions are affected by demographic variables and so the scores should be interpreted accordingly.

Keywords: Persian normative data, Pyramids and palm trees, Adult