[Production of a protocol on early intervention for speech and language delays in early childhood: a novice experience in Iran]

Objective: Speech and language disorders, when happening during childhood will ultimately lead to important negative outcomes in the life of the child. The farther we move from this critical period, that is, the first 3 years of life, the less will be the positive effects of environmental stimuli on the development of speech and language. Early detection of children at risk for or in the preliminary phases of developmental delays and provision of early intervention services for them is of utmost importance. The objective of this research was to compile and produce protocols for early intervention in childhood speech and language developmental disorders in Iranian children

Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in two main phases: review phase and qualitative phase. In the review phase, all accessible search engines and databases, especially those for systematic reviews and guidelines were searched. In the qualitative study phase, several focus group discussions and rounds of Delphi were carried out with 20 experts in 7 subgroups, who were selected purposively

Results: The result of this study is presented as 7 intervention packages, including the following domains of disorders: prelingual lingual hearing impairment, speech sound disorders, dysphagia, stuttering, and dysarthria

Conclusion: Most studies have confirmed the effectiveness and need for early interventions for children with speech and language impairment. However, most do not explain the details of these interventions. Before the present study, no systematic and evidence-based protocol existed for early intervention in childhood speech and language impairments, in Iran; and due to language differences, as well as possible differences in the speech and language developmental process of children of different communities, making direct use of non-Persian references was not possible and effective. Thus, there was a clear demand for the production of such a protocol

Adaptation of the syllable repetition task [SRT] and determining its validity and reliability in 4-6 persian-speaking children

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

Word Definitional Skills in School age Persian Speaking Children: a Developmental Study on Form

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.

percentage of vowel correct scale in Persian speaking children

The Percentage of vowel correct [PVC] is one of the indices in the development of articulation and phonological skills in children that can be measured with speech samples that could be extracted from the single word or connected speech tests. The aim of this study is to introduce the PVC scale in Persian speaking children and investigate its validity and reliability. This validation study was conducted on 387 monolingual Persian speaking children aged between 3-6, that were selected from 12 nurseries and kindergartens in north-western of Tehran. The instrument for measuring PVC was Phonological Picture naming Test which its Content Validity Ratio [CVR] was assessed by Speech Language Pathologists and linguists. The comparison PVC scores in with and without phonological disorders [using Independent t-tests] and the relationship of PVC scores with age [using Kruskal Wallis test] was used for determining construct validity of the scale. Test-retest and scoring rescoring were assessed, using Spearman's correlation coefficients, intra-class correlation coefficients [ICCs], standard errors of measurement [SEMs] and coefficients of variations [CVs]. Construct validity was confirmed with a significant difference between PVC scores of Children with and without phonological disorders [respectively: P<.001 and P<.05] and different age groups. Spearman's correlation coefficients, intra-class correlation coefficients [ICCs], standard errors of measurement [SEMs] and coefficients of variations [CVs] for test- retest respectively were [.65,.65,.48,.08] and for scoring-rescoring respectively were [.71,.69,.33,.08]. Results show that the PVC Scale is probably to be a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating articulation competence of Persian speaking children in clinical settings and research projects

[Language characteristics of preschool children with hearing loss in Tehran, Iran]

Hearing impairment affects all aspect of individual life, specially language and communications skills. When hearing impairment is congenital or occurs early in life, the child's ability to learn optimally through audition will be affected. The aim of this study was to evaluate linguistic skills of preschool hearing impaired children and compare these skills with normal peers. This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 38 preschool hearing impaired children that the main handicap was severe to profound hearing loss with ability to communicate orally and 28 normal children with the same culture and social context. Twenty four non linguistic variables including age, gender, the age of entrance of preschool center, number of hearing aids, etc. were obtained by filling a questionnaire and fifteen linguistics variables including number of utterance, morphemes, correct utterance, noun phrase, ambiguous utterance, correct sentences, compound sentences, etc. were collected by some part of TOLD-P-3 test and three complementary questions. Then we compared the data from two groups. There were significant differences between number of utterance, number of correct mean length utterance, number of well-formed sentences in normal and hearing impaired groups [p < 0.000]. There were no significant difference between unintelligible utterances, repetitive utterances and bad-formed sentences between two groups [p > 0.05]. This study showed a severe deficit in linguistic skills in preschool hearing impaired children