ABSTRACT
Word finding difficulty is a known impairments in multiple sclerosis (MS). The purpose of this study is to adapt homophone meaning generation test to Persian language, and then examine word storage and access in multiple sclerosis patients through these three word-finding tests. This study examined the word retrieval in 90 Persian speaking patients with multiple sclerosis and 90 matched healthy controls through three tasks: semantic fluency, phonemic fluency, and homophonic meaning generation. The Persian homophone meaning generation test had a strong convergent validity with semantic and phonemic switching and an adequate divergent validity with semantic and phonemic clustering. There was a significant difference between two groups in all three tests (p<0.001) except semantic and phonetic clustering (p≥ 0.05). Multiple sclerosis is a disease affecting word access, but not the word storage, and Persian homophone meaning generation test is an appropriate, valid, and reliable test to evaluate word-finding difficulties in this population. HMGT
ABSTRACT
Evaluation of hearing-impaired children's auditory skills by a valid test is very important before starting auditory training. There are many different tests available for languages other than Persian, and some limited Persian tests for children above 5 year of age as well. Accordingly considering the importance of early intervention, we aimed to design a test for evaluating auditory skill of 3-4 year-old hearing-impaired Persian [Farsi] children, which is not available to date. The study method was test [scale] construction. The test named Tavana includes four subtests: detection, discrimination, identification and sentence comprehension. For determining content validity of the test, the vocabulary of 3-4 year-old normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children and also the comments of seven specialists were applied. We classified 10, 10, 8 and 6 sub skills for 1[st] to 4[th] subtests, respectively. The content validity of Tavana test's subskills were 100%, 83%, 96% and 95%, respectively [mean=94%]. Mean time for test performance was 82 minutes. Content validity of Tavana test was 94% which was statistically valid compared to Modarres test [97%] and Mazaheryazdi test [88%]
Subject(s)
Humans , Child, Preschool , Evaluation Studies as Topic , Validation Studies as Topic , Correction of Hearing ImpairmentABSTRACT
Objective: A research was conducted to assess the phonological awareness in hearing-impaired children in comparison to normal children. In this context, we discussed about the ability of these children in identification of rhyme and word segmentation to syllables
Method and Material: The sample of this study is composed of 320 children, 160 normal and 160 hearing-impaired with a hearing-loss. Of over 70 dB, studying in the 1st t 4th grade of the primary schools in Tehran. They are divided into two groups at each level [20 girls and 20 boys]
Results: 1] Hearing-impaired children scores on test related to rhyme and syllable is lower as compared with normal children. 2] Hearing-impaired children are more potent on test of word segmentation to syllables in comparison to that related to rhyme, while normal children are more successful on test of word segmentation to syllables as compared with that related to rhyme
Discussion: Hearing is an important factor in phonological awareness. Formal education at special schools compensate for the hearing impairment as to development of the phonological awareness