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Background: Research on sensory processing, particularly its association with language disorders, has been increasing in recent years, aiming to understand the correlation between language and sensory processing. This study aimed to determine sensory profiles among children aged 36 and 120 months with language disorders (autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), specific language impairment (SLI), and intellectual disability (ID)) and correlate their language ages with their sensory profile responses. Results: The study involved 120 children with language disorders (ASD, ADHD, SLI, and ID), and 30 typically developing children. All children were subjected to assessment by the Sensory Profile and the Preschool Language Scale Fourth Edition (PLS-4) Arabic edition. Based on their sensory profile, children with language disorders are distinguished from typically developing peers. The former has a higher prevalence of sensory modulation disorders as well as atypical emotional and behavioral responses to sensory inputs compared to typically developing children. Children with ASD have the highest atypical sensory responses, followed by those with SLI, ADHD, and ID. A negative correlation was found between some sensory profile scores and receptive language scores. Expressive language was related to oral processing in some subtypes of language disorders. Conclusions: The study indicates that detailed sensory processing assessment in children reveals different faces for different types of language disorders.

Aim: During the last several decades, researchers have produced abundant evidence of the environmental impacts on stress, attention, and physical activity. More recently, scholars have turned their focus to the influence environments have on mental wellness. Therefore, a critical review of this more recent research is both timely and crucial for setting the future research agenda.Methods: In this article, we examined 65 papers published between 2008 and 2019 that examined the environmental correlates of a wide variety of mental health outcomes. We coded each study by type of environment, research design, mental health measurement scale used, and p-value.Results: We categorized the research studies into six groups based on mental health outcomes: emotions, moods, vitality, executive function, stress, and general well-being. Our review revealed several trends among the studies, including a heavy focus on nature and outdoor environments with little attention to workplace or residential environments; a lack of consensus on how to operationalize the environment; a heavy reliance on self-reported ratings using a wide variety of scales, many focused on the same outcome; and a disproportionate focus on short-term health effects.Conclusions: There is a need for greater consensus on research constructs and health outcome measurements, focused on a wider variety of environmental settings and scales, in order to better inform evidence-based environmental design practice.

Background: The university teaching faculty members are one of the occupational fields in education that are more exposed to voice disorders. The current study aimed to examine the association among vocal symptoms reported by faculty teaching professionals, impact of voice problems on daily activities, their vocal habits, and knowledge on vocal hygiene in relation to specialist consultation and to identify which of the assessed factors triggered the most for medical consultation. An online questionnaire was completed by 420 faculty teaching professionals from 7 universities in Egypt between November 2019 and December 2019. Results: All assessed vocal symptoms were significantly associated with specialist consultation (p-value <0.01). Most common bad vocal habits included increased voice loudness (71.2%), talking for long time (69.3%), and frequent throat clearance (54.0%). The most commonly reported preventive measures included avoid screaming (88.3%), stop smoking (87.1%), and taking periods of voice rest (86.4%). The strongest predictor of having specialist consultation was frequent throat clearance, recording an odds ratio of 23.809. Conclusion: Based on information obtained from the current study, ideas are suggested for setting up vocal hygiene programs throughout a professional voice career for keeping a healthy voice. Avoid passive smoking and using microphones are considered remarkable adequate methods for healthy voice.

Background: High-frequency consonants form an area of difficulty among children with hearing impairment. Many technological setups have emerged in order to improve their audibility, among them nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC). Therefore, the following study was carried out in order to evaluate change in production of high-frequency fricatives by hearing-impaired children utilizing NLFC hearing aids. This was through spectrographic analysis of F2 onset of transition elicited by fricatives in a prevocalic context, and results were compared to typically developing (TD) children. A change in mid-frequency sounds due to high-frequency compression was also tested through production of sustained vowels in isolation. Results: A preliminary prospective case-control study involved 9 patients with NLFC hearing aids, evaluated at 1- and at 6-month post-fitting, without receiving speech therapy. Spectrographic analysis of F2 formant onset in [a] and [i] vowels when combined with [s] and [f] fricatives in a CV (consonant-vowel) pattern, presented auditorily and audio-visually, was observed and analyzed. One patient was excluded due to noncompliance in attendance. In the 8 patients who completed the study, very high-frequency level of F2 onset in CV was notable in second versus first evaluation in NLFC group, to the extent of surpassing the typical value in TD control group with [i] vowel. Contrastingly, F2 of sustained vowels in isolation took a trend of a lower value after 6 months of NLFC hearing aid use, as compared to the first evaluation. Consequently, the gap between sustained vowel F2 level in TD and NLFC groups widened. Conclusion: Mean high-frequency range of F2 onset of transition in CV patterns of voiceless fricatives [s] and [f] with [i] and [a] vowels 6 months after NLFC fitting reflects an enhancement in the frequency range production of these sounds. A shift toward a lower F2 frequency range in sustained mid-frequency vowels, on the other hand, remains to be carefully investigated as a sequel of nonlinear frequency compression in the Egyptian hearing-impaired children.