ABSTRACT
Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the SRT that was performed in 4-6 year-old Persian-speaking children. The SRT is a nonword repetition task that assesses phonological working memory and was designed by Shriberg in 2008
Methods: The present research was a non-experimental study with a methodological design. The content validity of the task was evaluated by 15 speech language pathologists [SLP]. The Lawshe coefficient was acceptable, and therefore without changing the number and phonological structure of the nonwords, the SRT was performed by 140 normal children in two groups [4-5 and 5-6 years old] that were selected randomly from 10 kindergartens of Tehran. To assess the test-retest reliability, the SRT was performed at one-week intervals. Finally, to determine the differential validity of the SRT, the task was performed in 30 children with speech sound disorders [SSD] that had been selected from speech and language clinics of Tehran. SPSS software version 21 was used to determine the Pearson correlation coefficient, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and T-test
Results: The CVR coefficient of the SRT was between 0.57 and 1. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the total score was 0.83, and the Pearson correlation coefficient between successive runs was 0.87 [P <0.001]. There was a significant difference between the performances of two age groups [P=0.00]. Also, the SRT score in SSD children was significantly lower than in normal children [P=0.00]
Discussion: The SRT appears to be a psychometrically valid and reliable nonword repetition task for evaluating phonological working memory. The evidence of the differential validity of the SRT was approved in two ways: Differences between two age groups of normal children and differences between normal and SSD groups. The poor performance of children with SSD indicates that these patients have difficulty to store and retrieve phonological information in their working memory
ABSTRACT
Objectives: Word definitional skills [WDSs] were classified according to the quality of both semantic content and syntactic form. The aim of the present study was to investigate the syntactic development in WDSs in typically developing school- age children.
Methods: In this cross-sectional and descriptive- analytical study, 150 of typically developing schoolage children participated by the multistage sampling method in the second to sixth grade from primary schools in 1, 7 and 17 municipal districts of Tehran. The definition skill was assessed with word definition task. The reliability was assessed by two independent values and the validity was determined by the content. The results were analyzed by the SPSS [22th version] statistical software and with the method of independent- samples T test, univariate analysis of variance and Tukey test.
Results: The form analysis revealed that all children use phrase/clause or simple sentence, transitional form and Aristotelian form frequently, but by increasing the age, definitions were developed from simple syntactic structure into Aristotelian form, in fact mean score of the form in word definition was significantly increased by age [p< 0.001].
Discussion: Owing to the findings of this study, the development of word definitional skills in terms of form was developed from phrase/clause or simple sentence and transitional form responses into Aristotelian form. Also WDSs are closely related to academic success and the development of literacy.
ABSTRACT
Nouns and verbs are the central conceptual linguistic units of language acquisition in all human languages. While the noun-bias hypothesis claims that nouns have a privilege in children's lexical development across languages, studies on Mandarin and Korean and other languages have challenged this view. More recent cross-linguistic naming studies on children in German, Turkish, English and Korean demonstrate that all languages, including Korean show a noun advantage; however the degree of this discrepancy differs between languages. The aim of this study was to look at object and action naming in normal Persian children as a measure of conceptual development in preschool children and its possible use for screening and therapeutic procedures. In this analytical study, noun bias and processing dissociation of object and action naming in 64 three to six year old healthy monolingual Persian-speaking children was investigated. A black and white picture naming task, consisting of 36 nouns [natural and man-made], and 36 verbs [transitive and intransitive] was designed using DMDX software to measure response accuracy and reaction time of the subjects. The results indicate a significant noun advantage with regard to accuracy and naming latencies. The results also reveal that transitive verbs are named more accurately than intransitive ones in Persian speaking children. Also, the data indicate that accuracy of object and action naming improve with age [p=0.000]. Based on the results we recommended that a standardized Persian object and action naming battery be used. Such a tool would have the potential of screening lexical development delay and possible noun-verb performance gap in preschool children
Subject(s)
Humans , Female , Male , Object Attachment , Language ArtsABSTRACT
Understanding and defining developmental norms of auditory comprehension is a necessity for detecting auditory-verbal comprehension impairments in children. We hereby investigated lexical auditory development of Persian [Farsi] speaking children. In this cross-sectional study, auditory comprehension of four 2-5 year old normal children of adult's child-directed utterance at available nurseries was observed by researchers primarily to gain a great number of comprehendible words for the children of same age. The words were classified into nouns, verbs and adjectives. Auditory-verbal comprehension task items were also considered in 2 sections of subordinates and superordinates auditory comprehension. Colored pictures were provided for each item. Thirty 2-5 year old normal children were randomly selected from nurseries all over Tehran. Children were tested by this task and subsequently, mean of their correct response were analyzed. The findings revealed that there is a high positive correlation between auditory-verbal comprehension and age [r=0.804, p=0.001]. Comparing children in 3 age groups of 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5 year old, showed that subordinate and superordinate auditory comprehension of the former group is significantly lower [p<0.05] than the others. Intra-group comparisons revealed no significant difference between nouns, verbs and adjectives [p>0.05], while the difference between subordinate and superordinate auditory comprehension was significant in all age groups [p<0.05]. Auditory-verbal comprehension develop much faster at lower than older ages and there is no prominent difference between word linguistic classes including nouns, verbs and adjectives. Slower development of superordinate auditory comprehension implies semantic hierarchical evolution of words