ABSTRACT
Introduction: communication skill [CS] has been regarded as one of the fundamental competencies for medical and other health care professionals. Student's attitude toward learning CS is a key factor in designing educational interventions. The original CSAS, as positive and negative subscales, was developed in the UK; however, there is no scale to measure these attitudes in Iran. The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric characteristic of the Communication Skills Attitude Scale [CSAS], in an Iranian context and to understand if it is a valid tool to assess attitude toward learning communication skills among health care professionals
Methods: psychometric characteristics of the CSAS were assessed by using a cross-sectional design. In the current study, 410 medical students were selected using stratified sampling framework. The face validity of the scale was estimated through students and experts' opinion. Content validity of CSAS was assessed qualitatively and quantitatively. Reliability was examined through two methods including Chronbach's alpha coefficient and Intra class Correlation of Coefficient [ICC]. Construct validity of CSAS was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis [CFA] and explanatory factor analysis [PCA] followed by varimax rotation. Convergent and discriminant validity of the scale was measured through Spearman correlation. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 19 and EQS, 6.1
Results: the internal consistency and reproducibility of the total CSAS score were 0.84 [Cronbach's alpha] and 0.81, which demonstrates an acceptable reliability of the questionnaire. The item-level content validity index [I CVI] and the scale-level content validity index [S-CVI/ Ave] demonstrated appropriate results: 0.97 and 0.94, respectively. An exploratory factor analysis [EFA] on the 25 items of the CSAS revealed 4-factor structure that all together explained %55 of the variance. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated an acceptable goodness-offit between the model and the observed data. [Chi 2/df=2.36, Comparative Fit Index [CFI]=0.95, the GFI=0.96, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA]=0.05]
Conclusion: the Persian version of CSAS is a multidimensional, valid and reliable tool for assessing attitudes towards communication skill among medical students
ABSTRACT
In speech therapy, treatment efficacy includes 3 specific fields as treatment effectiveness, efficiency and effects. Treatment efficiency compares two approaches or more with each other. The aim of this study was to compare of two approaches: general language stimulation and developmental-descriptive approach. It has been done as an interventional-longitudinal study with14 participants [primary school students with hearing loss] for two educational years. All changes in different parts of language were assessed by decontextualized language test, storytelling, action verb and sentence writing in the end of each year. Total number of affixes in storytelling, derivational suffix in action verb test, expression of prepositions and adverb [location] as well as perception superlative adjective in decontextualized language test had statistically significant changes [P<0.05]. Findings show developmental-descriptive approach has more positive effects because of specificity of language treatment goals.
ABSTRACT
Due to limitation of standardized tests for Persian-speakers with language disorders, spontaneous language sampling collection is an important part of assessment of language protocol. Therefore, selection of a language sampling method, which will provide information of linguistic competence in a short time, is important. Therefore, in this study, we compared the language samples elicited with picture description and storytelling methods in order to determine the effectiveness of the two methods. In this study 30 first-grade elementary school girls were selected with simple sampling. To investigate picture description method, we used two illustrated stories with four pictures. Language samples were collected through storytelling by telling a famous children's story. To determine the effectiveness of these two methods the two indices of duration of sampling and mean length of utterance [MLU] were compared. There was no significant difference between MLU in description and storytelling methods [p>0.05]. However, duration of sampling was shorter in the picture description method than the story telling method [p<0.05]. Findings show that, the two methods of picture description and storytelling have the same potential in language sampling. Since, picture description method can provide language samples with the same complexity in a shorter time than storytelling, it can be used as a beneficial method for clinical purposes
ABSTRACT
Recently, researchers have increasingly turned to study the relation between stuttering and syntactic complexity. This study investigates the effect of syntactic complexity on the amount of speech dysfluency in stuttering Persian-speaking children and adults in conversational speech. The obtained results can pave the way to a better understanding of stuttering in children and adults, and finding more appropriate treatments. In this cross-sectional study, the participants were 15 stuttering adult Persian-speakers, older than 15 years, and 15 stuttering child Persian-speakers of 4-6 years of age. In this study, first a 30 minute sample of the spontaneous speech of the participants was provided. Then the utterances of each person were studied in respect to the amount of dysfluency and syntactic complexity. The obtained information was analyzed using paired samples t-test. In both groups of stuttering children and adults, there was a significant difference between the amount of dysfluency of simple and complex sentences [p<0.05]. The results of this study showed that an increase in syntactic complexity in conversational speech, increased the amount of dysfluency in stuttering children and adults. Moreover, as a result of increase of syntactic complexity, dysfluency had a greater increase in stuttering children than stuttering adults
ABSTRACT
Pronouncing phonemes is one of phoneme awareness skills that influences on reading and writing skills. The development of this skill stats in ages 5-6, but doesn't evolve in these ages. Many variables [the number of phonemes, the position of phonemes in word and the type of phonemes] may influence on this skill. In this study, the ability of pronouncing initial phonemes and the effects of type of phoneme on this skill were evaluated. This analytic-descriptive study was performed on 100 normal and 5-6 year-old Persian-speaking children [50 girls and 50 boys] who were randomly selected. The tool of this study was pronouncing initial phonemes task. This task was included of 6 questions. The responses of children were recorded and registered and analyzed using paired sample t-test. The comparison of data between girls and boys was assessed by independent t-test the ability of pronouncing initial phonemes in 5-6 year-old Persian-Speaking children was 0.68. The effects of the manner of articulation was significantly more than those of articulation position and voiced and voiceless [p=0.000]. The ability of children in pronouncing fricative phonemes was significantly more than other phonemes [p=0.000]. Mean scores of girls and boys was not significantly different [p=0.57]. The ability of pronouncing initial phonemes develops in early 5-6 ages. The type of phoneme influences on the ability of pronouncing initial phonemes in 5 to 6 year-old children. It seems that the effects of manner of articulation is more than the position of articulation and voiced and voiceless. The ability of pronouncing initial fricative phonemes was significantly more than other phonemes in 5-6 year-old children. In this task, the skills of girls and boys were the same
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Female , Speech , Child , PhonationABSTRACT
The short-term memory [STM] has been studied to a great extent so far. Using some strategies and techniques to help the subject to access to his/her memory is important for Speech pathologist. Priming is a process that increases the chance of accessing to some information of memory by means of some simulations. So, primings are some words which facilitate the retrieval of the target words. The purpose of this study is comparing phonological and semantic priming on the short verbal memory span. The research was conducted on sixty-four 18-25 year-old male students in Tehran University of Medical sciences. Due to some distortion factors, including bilingualism, stutter-ing, and articulation problem, that can effect the reaction time, were determined as exclusion critenia. In additiion, subjects with difficulty in Wepman auditory discrimination were ruled out. The test was performed via the second version of programmed DMDX software and reaction time was recorded. Semantic tasks and rhyming tasks were retrieved faster than the other tasks in lexical access respectively. There was a significant difference between the semantic and rime tasks but there is no significant difference between alliteration and unrelated tasks. The result of this research indicates that the semantic level is activated faster than the other levels and the phonological level is activated right after that. The alliteration level is the last level that activated. It has some similarities with some other investigations on the reaction time in phono-logical tasks