The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is one of the instruments used for measuring a dysphagic patie... more 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
Introduction: Teachers often speak to high volume for a long time both in the noisy environments ... more 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 questionn...
Introduction: Problems with the production of sentences with prepositions are one of the most com... more 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 four 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...
Introduction: The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is one of the instruments used for measuring a d... more 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 re...
Objectives: The purpose of this research was to explore the possible differences in the working m... more Objectives: The purpose of this research was to explore the possible differences in the working memory of monolingual (Persian) and bilingual (Persian-Baluchi) children. We wanted to examine if there is a statistically significant relationship between working memory and bilingualism. Methods: Four working memory (WM) tests, assessing three WM components, were administered to 140 second grade school students, of whom 70 were monolinguals (35 girls and 35 boys) and 70 were bilinguals (35 girls and 35 boys). The tests used are the following: Forward Digit Span Test, Backward Digit Span Test, Non Word Repetition Test, Maze Memory Test. The results of the two groups were analyzed with multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, aiming to find out any differences in the working memory function of bilingual and monolingual children, and to determine which group has an advantage. Results: The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure various WM factors across the two langua...
Background This study is to evaluate swallowing problems (dysphasia) in multiple sclerosis (MS) p... more Background This study is to evaluate swallowing problems (dysphasia) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients; the importance of using tools that are durable and appropriate is well understood. One of the most trusted tools is the dysphagia in multiple sclerosis (DYMUS) test. The aim of this study was to prepare a Persian version and to evaluate the validity and reliability of the test. Materials and Methods This methodological study was conducted on 236 MS patients in Southeast of Iran from August 2015 to February 2016. After translation and cultural adaptation of the test in Persian, the validity of this test was determined using expert opinions accordance with the International Quality of Life Assessment Project. In addition, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed with varimax rotation. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted and the goodness of fit indices was calculated. Moreover, to test the reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were used. Results: In total, 236 MS patients were included in the study (81 males and 155 females). All the questions in the test's Persian version obtained an acceptable face and content validity (content validity ratio = 1, Scale content validity index/Ave = 1). EFA revealed that the scale has two factors (solid–liquid) with 67.5% cumulative variance. CFA indicated a good fit to the intended two-factor structure, and the ratio of Chi-square to the degree of freedom was 1.79, and the root mean square error of approximation was 0.058. The internal consistency of total test indicated the appropriate level (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.775), and test–retest reliability total questionnaire was found to be ICC = 0.985, indicating its high reliability. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the Persian version of the DYMUS questionnaire had good reliability and validity for patients with MS.
International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2015
The purpose of this study was to measure and compare temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian... more The purpose of this study was to measure and compare temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian children with and without cleft palate in three vowel contexts. A Sample of 14 children with repaired cleft palates with or without cleft lip with moderate to severe hyper nasality and 14 children without cleft palate was chosen as subjects. The subjects were chosen from the ages of 4 to 12 years. The nasal onset interval, nasal offset interval and total nasalization duration were obtained from acoustic waveforms and spectrograms in three vowel contexts using Praat Software. For eliminating the effect of different speed of speech in the cleft palate group and control group, the ratio of nasalization duration was calculated. Total nasalization duration are demonstrated by acoustic signals which shows the total significant different temporal patterns in children with cleft palate and without cleft palate and across the vowel contexts (P<0.000). Longer nasalization durations in children with cleft palate in comparison to children without cleft palate show the delayed or deviant temporal patterns in children with cleft palate. The duration of nasalization reflecting temporal patterns of the oral-nasal acoustic impedance in children with cleft palate may have an influence on the perception of hyper nasality.
We read with interest excellent paper by Ha and Kuehn (2011) in which they reported their study o... more We read with interest excellent paper by Ha and Kuehn (2011) in which they reported their study on temporal characteristics of nasalization between English speakers with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP6L). They demonstrated that measurements of nasalization duration in English speakers with CP6L are more extensive rather than that of English speakers without CP6L. This result was also consistent with study of the Ha et al. (2004), which surveyed temporal characteristics of nasalization inKorean children with and without CP6L (Ha and Kuehn, 2011). However, some investigations suggest that the degree of coarticulated nasality is language specific and that different languages may show different patterns of timing, magnitude, duration, and velocity of velopharyngeal movements. The English and Korean languages are similar in terms of nasalization durations and acoustic temporal measures. It should be noted that the English and Korean languages have similar nasal consonants (/m, n, n/) and no phonemically nasalized vowels or diphthongs (Ha and Kuehn, 2006). Performing an investigation on temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian childrenwith andwithoutCP6Lwe found the same results. Our results indicated that Persian children with CP6L have significantly longer nasalization duration than children without CP6L (Baghban et al., 2015). Although the Persian language has two nasal consonants (/m, n/), similar to the Korean and English languages, there are no phonemically nasalized vowels or diphthongs. Our study, as well as the study of Ha et al. (2004), showed that the vowel /i/ context would better show the difference between children with and without CP6L in terms of nasalization durations. Thus, it seems that these three languages (English, Korean, and Persian) have similar temporal patterns of nasalization, so more investigation needs to be performed to prove the language-specific nature of nasalization. Until then, language specificness of temporal characteristics should be noted with caution, at least in languages that have common nasal consonants. These comparisons give us a better view of similarities and differences between languages in the area of temporal patterns of nasalization in speakers with and without CP6L, and this could be basis for more diagnostic activities.
The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is one of the instruments used for measuring a dysphagic patie... more 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
Introduction: Teachers often speak to high volume for a long time both in the noisy environments ... more 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 questionn...
Introduction: Problems with the production of sentences with prepositions are one of the most com... more 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 four 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...
Introduction: The Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) is one of the instruments used for measuring a d... more 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 re...
Objectives: The purpose of this research was to explore the possible differences in the working m... more Objectives: The purpose of this research was to explore the possible differences in the working memory of monolingual (Persian) and bilingual (Persian-Baluchi) children. We wanted to examine if there is a statistically significant relationship between working memory and bilingualism. Methods: Four working memory (WM) tests, assessing three WM components, were administered to 140 second grade school students, of whom 70 were monolinguals (35 girls and 35 boys) and 70 were bilinguals (35 girls and 35 boys). The tests used are the following: Forward Digit Span Test, Backward Digit Span Test, Non Word Repetition Test, Maze Memory Test. The results of the two groups were analyzed with multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, aiming to find out any differences in the working memory function of bilingual and monolingual children, and to determine which group has an advantage. Results: The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure various WM factors across the two langua...
Background This study is to evaluate swallowing problems (dysphasia) in multiple sclerosis (MS) p... more Background This study is to evaluate swallowing problems (dysphasia) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients; the importance of using tools that are durable and appropriate is well understood. One of the most trusted tools is the dysphagia in multiple sclerosis (DYMUS) test. The aim of this study was to prepare a Persian version and to evaluate the validity and reliability of the test. Materials and Methods This methodological study was conducted on 236 MS patients in Southeast of Iran from August 2015 to February 2016. After translation and cultural adaptation of the test in Persian, the validity of this test was determined using expert opinions accordance with the International Quality of Life Assessment Project. In addition, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed with varimax rotation. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted and the goodness of fit indices was calculated. Moreover, to test the reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were used. Results: In total, 236 MS patients were included in the study (81 males and 155 females). All the questions in the test's Persian version obtained an acceptable face and content validity (content validity ratio = 1, Scale content validity index/Ave = 1). EFA revealed that the scale has two factors (solid–liquid) with 67.5% cumulative variance. CFA indicated a good fit to the intended two-factor structure, and the ratio of Chi-square to the degree of freedom was 1.79, and the root mean square error of approximation was 0.058. The internal consistency of total test indicated the appropriate level (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.775), and test–retest reliability total questionnaire was found to be ICC = 0.985, indicating its high reliability. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the Persian version of the DYMUS questionnaire had good reliability and validity for patients with MS.
International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2015
The purpose of this study was to measure and compare temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian... more The purpose of this study was to measure and compare temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian children with and without cleft palate in three vowel contexts. A Sample of 14 children with repaired cleft palates with or without cleft lip with moderate to severe hyper nasality and 14 children without cleft palate was chosen as subjects. The subjects were chosen from the ages of 4 to 12 years. The nasal onset interval, nasal offset interval and total nasalization duration were obtained from acoustic waveforms and spectrograms in three vowel contexts using Praat Software. For eliminating the effect of different speed of speech in the cleft palate group and control group, the ratio of nasalization duration was calculated. Total nasalization duration are demonstrated by acoustic signals which shows the total significant different temporal patterns in children with cleft palate and without cleft palate and across the vowel contexts (P<0.000). Longer nasalization durations in children with cleft palate in comparison to children without cleft palate show the delayed or deviant temporal patterns in children with cleft palate. The duration of nasalization reflecting temporal patterns of the oral-nasal acoustic impedance in children with cleft palate may have an influence on the perception of hyper nasality.
We read with interest excellent paper by Ha and Kuehn (2011) in which they reported their study o... more We read with interest excellent paper by Ha and Kuehn (2011) in which they reported their study on temporal characteristics of nasalization between English speakers with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP6L). They demonstrated that measurements of nasalization duration in English speakers with CP6L are more extensive rather than that of English speakers without CP6L. This result was also consistent with study of the Ha et al. (2004), which surveyed temporal characteristics of nasalization inKorean children with and without CP6L (Ha and Kuehn, 2011). However, some investigations suggest that the degree of coarticulated nasality is language specific and that different languages may show different patterns of timing, magnitude, duration, and velocity of velopharyngeal movements. The English and Korean languages are similar in terms of nasalization durations and acoustic temporal measures. It should be noted that the English and Korean languages have similar nasal consonants (/m, n, n/) and no phonemically nasalized vowels or diphthongs (Ha and Kuehn, 2006). Performing an investigation on temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian childrenwith andwithoutCP6Lwe found the same results. Our results indicated that Persian children with CP6L have significantly longer nasalization duration than children without CP6L (Baghban et al., 2015). Although the Persian language has two nasal consonants (/m, n/), similar to the Korean and English languages, there are no phonemically nasalized vowels or diphthongs. Our study, as well as the study of Ha et al. (2004), showed that the vowel /i/ context would better show the difference between children with and without CP6L in terms of nasalization durations. Thus, it seems that these three languages (English, Korean, and Persian) have similar temporal patterns of nasalization, so more investigation needs to be performed to prove the language-specific nature of nasalization. Until then, language specificness of temporal characteristics should be noted with caution, at least in languages that have common nasal consonants. These comparisons give us a better view of similarities and differences between languages in the area of temporal patterns of nasalization in speakers with and without CP6L, and this could be basis for more diagnostic activities.
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