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Background and aim:The current research provides a word association test and determine its validity and reliability in Persian (farsi) language.
Materials and methods: A word association test was administered to a group of twenty girls and twenty one boys that were similar in age and education. Based on Goldfarb's word association test , word stimuli were balanced according to frequency of occurrence (frequent, infrequent), word length (short, long), abstraction level (low , medium, high) ,and grammatical class (noun ,verb, adjective ) . Based on "Recognition basic word's Iranian student in primary school"(nemat zade,1384),180 words were selected. This words scored by experts. Seventy two words were selected . The test administered in oral on the first grade students .Then responses were coded as paradigmatic or sytagmatic . Results were analyzed by Maknamar and Capa test.
Results: Findings show high correlation between first and second test in three grammatical Class (noun, verb, adjective, p=0/001).High correlation exists between two stages of test.
Conclusion: These findings show word association test is valid and reliable .This is usable in assessment of semantic development and language development.

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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: Various studies indicate that background noise affects speech recognition ability of bilingual listeners (BL) more than monolingual ones (ML). However, no study has engaged in the speech recognition performance of Turkish-Persian bilinguals in the background noise. The purpose of the present study was to compare word recognition scores (WRSs) in the continuous and interrupted noises among ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian young adults. 

Material and methods: The cross- sectional analytical study was conducted by presenting speech stimuli in quiet and in the background continuous and interrupted noises at signal to noise ratios (SNRs) of -20, -10, 0, +10 dB. Two groups of 33 ML Persian and 36 BL Turkish- Persian subjects with age ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years old participated   

Results: The degree of reduction in WRSs was significantly higher in the continuous noise relative to the interrupted one at four studied SNRs (p<0.0001) Moreover, the difference between WRSs of ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian groups in the presence of both continuous (p≤0.001) and interrupted (p=0.002) noises was significant.

Conclusion: It seems that Persian-words recognition ability of Turkish-Persian BLs reduces more than Persian MLs in the background noises and continuous noise affects speech perception ability more than interrupted one. 

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Background and aim: Various studies indicate that background noise affects speech recognition ability of bilingual listeners (BL) more than monolingual ones (ML). However, no study has engaged in the speech recognition performance of Turkish-Persian bilinguals in the background noise. The purpose of the present study was to compare word recognition scores (WRSs) in the continuous and interrupted noises among ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian young adults.

Material and methods: The cross- sectional analytical study was conducted by presenting speech stimuli in quiet and in the background continuous and interrupted noises at signal to noise ratios (SNRs) of -20, -10, 0, +10 dB. Two groups of 33 ML Persian and 36 BL Turkish- Persian subjects with age ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years old participated   

 Results: The degree of reduction in WRSs was significantly higher in the continuous noise relative to the interrupted one at four studied SNRs (p<0.0001) Moreover, the difference between WRSs of ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian groups in the presence of both continuous (p≤0.001) and interrupted (p=0.002) noises was significant.

Conclusion: It seems that Persian-words recognition ability of Turkish-Persian BLs reduces more than Persian MLs in the background noises and continuous noise affects speech perception ability more than interrupted one. 

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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: 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

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Background and Aim: Children with cerebral palsy have impaired quality of life for reasons such as sensory-motor impairments. There is no tool in Persian to examine quality of life of children with cerebral palsy based on their specific conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess psychometric properties of the  Persian version of the parent report of the Quality of Life Questionnaire for adolescence with Cerebral Palsy (CP QOL Teen).

Materials and Methods: In this psychometrics measurement study, CP QOL (parent report) was translated to Persian based on the International Quality of Life Assessment Project (International Quality Of Life Assessment Project: IQOLA), and then its face validity, content validity, construct validity, and reliability were assessed. A convenient sample of subjects including 82 parents of adolescence with cerebral palsy (13-18 years old), were recruited.

Results: Face and content validity were obtained by parents and experts respectively. Content Validity Index was 0.62. There was a significant correlation between total score and subscales scores of the questionnaire and also, between total score and GMFCS. The intraclass correlation coefficient for the total score was 0.994. Also, cronbach's coefficient &alpha; for the internal consistency of all of the questions of the questionnaire were 0.996

Conclusion: Persian version of the parent report of CPQOL has acceptable reliability and validity. It is a useful assessment tool for evaluating the quality of life of adolescence with cerebral palsy.

Keywords: Reliability, Validity, Persian version of parent report of the quality of life questionnaire for adolescence with cerebral palsy.