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Context: One aspect of spoken language skills is vocabulary, which provides a basis for acquiring other language aspects. Assessing a child's vocabulary knowledge aids in identifying the child's language strengths and weaknesses and predicts reading ability and academic success. Speech-language pathologists frequently employ various procedures in clinical and research settings to assess the children's language skills and help make decisions about diagnosis, eligibility for services, and intervention. Objectives: This systematic review investigated currently available vocabulary tests developed or adapted for Iranian Persian-speaking children. Data Sources: Based on the PRISMA guideline, electronic searches of three national (SID, Irandoc, and Magiran) and four international (ScienceDirect, ProQuest, PubMed, and Google scholar) databases were carried out from 2000 to 2022 to identify Persian vocabulary assessment tools. Study Selection: Search in the reference lists of papers, unpublished theses, and content of related journals also supplemented the database searches. Data Extraction: The psychometric properties of these tests were reviewed based on specific criteria used in the literature. The papers and test manuals were examined according to these criteria. Results: Eight tools have been developed or adapted for assessing vocabulary knowledge in Iranian Persian-speaking children. Reviewing the content and psychometric properties of the included tools indicated that the Test of Language Development- Primary:3 (TOLD-P:3) is the only accessible published tool with the most reported psychometric evidence. It measures language development in children; however, it is a multi-modal test that includes vocabulary subtests. Conclusions: This review revealed that most of the reviewed tools were in the primitive stages of test development or adaptation procedures and did not examine many psychometric properties. As a result, vocabulary is a field that requires more attention because there is no accessible, standardized tool with adequate psychometric properties.

Introduction: Problems with the production of sentences with prepositions are one of the most common language problems in people with aphasia (PWA). Structural priming (SP) is one of the theory-based therapeutic approaches to improve these deficits. Although several studies have been conducted on the sentence construction problems of PWA, there is no study on the SP protocol for the production of sentences with Persian prepositions. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of SP in the production of these sentences among Persian-speaking PWA. Methods: This study, with a single-subject ABA design, evaluated the efficacy of SP in the production of trained and untrained sentences containing Persian prepositions in four aphasic individuals with agrammatism and investigated the maintenance effects at 4 weeks post-training. Results: Two subjects (A.G. and M.S.) showed notable changes in the production of trained sentences with Persian prepositions (50% to 91.67% for A.G. and 0% to 66.67% for M.S.). This significant improvement was generalized to sentences with untrained prepositions (50% to 91.67% for A.G. and 0% to 83.33% for M.S.). The treatment effects were also maintained in the 4-week follow-up (d2 = 10.3 for A.G. and d2 = 19.06 for M.S.). However, the other two participants only showed a slight increase in these variables after treatment. Conclusion: The findings of the present study revealed that SP for sentences with prepositions could be useful to varying degrees for Persian-speaking PWA with agrammatism and lead to improved language skills in producing these sentences. Overall, individuals with better language skills and cognitive status in early assessments showed better treatment outcomes than others.

This mixed two-way experimental, cross-sectional study investigated fast-mapping (FM) of novel nouns and verbs in 63 Persian-speaking toddlers aged 30 months, including 31 late-talking (LT)...

Introduction: Professionals need a multidisciplinary approach to manage oropharyngeal dysphagia (OPD). Each team member should be aware of the signs and symptoms of OPD and collaborate with other team members to reach an optimum outcome. This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitude of Iranian physicians regarding dysphagia and speech and language therapy roles in the management of dysphagia. Materials and Methods: In this nonexperimental descriptive study, 133 physicians filled a researcher-made questionnaire entailing three sections, each of which recorded the participants’ demographic information, OPD knowledge (23 items), and attitude toward OPD (5 items). Results: Iranian physicians correctly answered 70.3% of the questions indicating that they had a moderate level of knowledge on OPD. However, only 53% of the physicians referred their patients to speech-language pathologists, and almost 50% of them reported a significant recovery after speech therapy in their patients. Conclusion: It seems that Iranian physicians need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to manage OPD. Achievement of sufficient knowledge on the pathology of OPD, along with collaboration with other team members, can improve the outcome for patients with OPD.

Background: Strenuous endurance training compromises the antioxidant defenses of the body and attempts to find supplements to heal gastric ulcers induced by strenuous endurance training are increasing. Objectives: Therefore, the current study aimed at investigating the effects of curcumin supplementation during nine weeks of endurance training on gastric antioxidant capacity (superoxide dismutase; SOD) and lipid peroxidation (malondialdehyde; MDA) of serum in male Wistar rats. Methods: The current applied research was conducted on 26 male Wistar rats aged nine weeks and weighed 215.87 ± 20.49 g. After one week of acclimation to training, the rats were randomly assigned to four groups: the control, curcumin, endurance, and endurance + curcumin. During the nine weeks (five sessions per week), the rats performed an incremental endurance training (up to 70 minutes at 35 m/minute), and the curcumin supplement at 30 mg/kg of body weight was injected intraperitoneally three times per week. SOD activity was assayed by the spectrophotometric method, and serum MDA level was measured utilizing the thiobarbituric acid reactive substances. For data analysis, ANOVA was employed using SPSS version 24. Results: The results of the study revealed that strenuous endurance training significantly reduced the activity of the gastric SOD enzyme (P < 0.05) and increased serum MDA level (P < 0.05), while curcumin supplementation increased gastric SOD enzyme activity, decreased serum MDA level, and resulted in the restoration of antioxidant defenses. Conclusions: Prolonged strenuous endurance training induces oxidative stress to gastric tissue, and curcumin supplementation restores the antioxidant defense of the gastric tissue and body.

Background One of the relatively common symptoms in non-fluent aphasia is agrammatism. Agrammatism is characterized with low syntactic complexity and deficits in verb inflection, especially tense markers. Verbs as the main core of sentences in the Persian language have vital functions for people to have effective communication. Objectives The current study aimed at evaluating the effect of morphosemantic method on verb-tense inflection in Persian-speaking patients with aphasia and agrammatism. Methods Morphosemantic treatment was conducted in five stages in a case report study. The material was 46 black and white line-drawing pictures related to 23 verbs including 10 training, 10 expansion, and three exemplar verbs drawn in present and past tenses. In three phases, the percentage of correct verb inflection in the training and expansion verbs was measured and also the graph examination of level, slope of trend, and C statistic, 2-standard deviation band, effect size (percentage of non-overlapping data), and d statistic were used to analyze the data. Results Both participants demonstrated significant changes in training and expansion verbs during therapeutic sessions in comparison with the baseline. The effect of therapy was maintained for a three-week follow-up. Conclusions Therapy for verb inflection in spontaneous speech is clinically important. The current study demonstrated that morphosemantic method can be successfully used for tense marker deficits in Persian-speaking patients with aphasia and agrammatism.

Introduction: The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is one of the instruments used for measuring a dysphagic patient’s self-assessment. In some ways, it reflects the patient’s quality of life. Although it has been recognized and widely applied in English speaking populations, it has not been used in its present forms in Persian speaking countries. The purpose of this study was to adapt a Persian version of the DHI and to evaluate its validity, consistency, and reliability in the Persian population with oropharyngeal dysphagia. Materials and Methods: Some stages for cross-cultural adaptation were performed, which consisted in translation, synthesis, back translation, review by an expert committee, and final proof reading. The generated Persian DHI was administered to 85 patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia and 89 control subjects at Zahedan city between May 2013 and August 2013. The patients and control subjects answered the same questionnaire 2 weeks later to verify the test-retest reliability. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were evaluated. The results of the patients and the control group were compared. Results: The Persian DHI showed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients range from 0.82 to 0.94). Also, good test-retest reliability was found for the total scores of the Persian DHI (r=0.89). There was a significant difference between the DHI scores of the control group and those of the oropharyngeal dysphagia group (P‹0.001). Conclusion: The Persian version of the DHI achieved Face and translation validity. This study demonstrated that the Persian DHI is a valid tool for self-assessment of the handicapping effects of dysphagia on the physical, functional, and emotional aspects of patient life and can be a useful tool for screening and treatment planning for the Persian-speaking dysphagic patients, regardless of the cause or the severity of the dysphagia.

Objectives: Semantic Feature Analysis was designed to improve lexical retrieval of aphasic patients via activation of semantic networks of the words. In this approach, the anomic patients are cured with semantic information to assist oral naming. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Semantic Feature Analysis treatment on anomia of two nonfluent aphasic patients. Methods: A single-subject study with ABA design was applied to two Persian-speaking patients with chronic nonfluent aphasia. Assessment, baseline, ntervention and maintenance phases were carried out respectively during 6 weeks. A picture naming task which was made up of pictures with high name- agreement comprising 12 target, 18 non-treated control and 5 easy words was used for probes and intervention. Intervention was performed in 5 successive days, 60 minutes per session. Descriptive statistics, level, trend & slope analyses, C and d statistics were used for data analysis. Results: Both participants revealed statistically significant improvements in naming target words. Some generalizations to control words was also occured. A minimal decrease in naming of target words was observed in maintenance phase but the naming ability was still above the baseline. The therapy maintenance effect size for both patients were obtained as medium. Discussion: The findings of the current study seems to confirm Semantic Feature Analysis as an effective intervention for improving naming ability of Persian-speaking aphasic patients.

Introduction: Teachers often speak to high volume for a long time both in the noisy environments and in the stressful situations; therefore, their tissue of vocal cords are exposed to damage. The voice problems may have the adverse impacts on the quality of education, employment, economic and communicative conditions and also on the emotional status. In this study, the effects of voice problems on the teachers’ job performance communication, social and emotional status were investigated through comparing the teachers’ knowledge with/without dysphonia from their voice problems. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 243 teachers at primary schools. The participants on the basis of response to the four – choice items and in relation to the rate of his/her voice problems (always, often, sometimes and rarely) were divided into two groups with/without voice problems (VP = always and often) and lack of voice ones (NVP = sometimes and rarely). To collect the data, the questionnaire with α = 0.91 was used, and to investigate the relationship between the voice problems and the performance of teachers. Results: The findings showed that the voice problems among the teachers had a significant relationship with teaching, job attitude, ability for communication, social ability and their emotions (P