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Background and Aim: Early communication skills in children with hearing loss depend on the quantity and quality of information received from parents. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of early communication skills training in developing the communication skills of infants and toddlers with cochlear implants. Methods: To this end, 54 infants and toddlers at the age range of 8–24 months with sever to profound hearing loss fitted by Cochlear Implant (CI) with their mothers participated in this study. The experimental and wait list control groups had auditory verbal therapy as the main intervention after the CI; however, the experimental group received a systematic early communication skills program. All subjects were assessed using the Communication and Symbolic Behaviour Scales Developmental Profile as the pre-and post-tests. Results: Multivariate analysis of covariance indicated the effect of systematic training on the early communication development of subjects in intervention group. Conclusion: Teaching the parents how to interact with infants and toddlers with CI could improve the communication skills of the infants and therefore it’s recommended to be included in the auditory rehabilitation programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The infant-toddler meaningful auditory integration scale (IT-MAIS) can evaluate toddlers and infants' early auditory development in aspects of detection, discrimination, and identification of sounds. The present study aims to evaluate the reliability and criterion validity of the Persian version of the IT-MAIS (IT-MAIS-P) for children with hearing loss (HL). Materials and Methods: In this study, due to the limitations of COVID-19 and the lack of access to samples, 23 available children with HL were sampled. The cause of participants› HL was 43.5% congenital, 30.4% acquired, and 26.1% unknown. The Mean±SD of the age of these children was 21.6±6.3 months. To evaluate the predictive validity and concurrent validity, the speech intelligibility rating (SIR) and categories of auditory performance (CAP) were used, respectively. Also, to assess the inter-rater reliability, both parents of each child completed the IT-MAIS-P. Results: A significant correlation (concurrent validity) was observed between the IT-MAIS-P and the CAP scores (r=0.87, P<0.001). Predictive validity was not confirmed by comparing it with the SIR (P>0.05). Also, the inter-rater reliability (kappa=0.44, P<0.001) of the IT-MAIS-P was confirmed. Conclusion: The IT-MAIS-P is a valid tool to investigate the progress of auditory skills in infants, although the predictive validity was not confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims The present study was conducted to investigate the change in the receptive language, intermediate language, expressive language, semantics, syntax, and phonology of dyslexic students and compare them with the norm group. Methods The statistical sample of the present study comprised 28 dyslexic students studying in the first and second grades of primary school and 29 normal students from the same grades. They were selected non-randomly based on the inclusion criteria. The third edition of the Persian version of the test of language development (TOLD-P3) was used to measure the components of receptive language, intermediate language, and expressive language. Tehran Stanford-Binet intelligence test (TSB-5) and reading and dyslexia test (NAMA) were used to diagnose dyslexia. Multivariate analysis of variance was used for data analysis. Results The findings indicate a significant difference in the evolution of the components of receptive language, intermediate language, expressive language, semantics, syntax, and phonology between dyslexic and normative students. Conclusion According to the results, dyslexic students are weaker in all components of spoken language than their non-dyslexic peers. Considering the dyslexic students' problem in reading, they are profoundly different from their normal peers in lower levels of language, including spoken language. Thus, the growth and development of language skills must be considered in reading learning disability besides other rehabilitation skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]