Auditory and Vestibular Research
Volume:23 Issue: 2, 2014

Specific language impiarment (SLI) is one of the most prevalent developmental language disorders its diagnosis is a problematic issue among researchers and clinicians because of the heterogeneity of language profiles in the affected population and overlapping with other developmental language disorders. The aim of this study was to review the suggested diagnostic criteria for this disorder, controversies about these criteria and identify the most accurate diagnostic methods. Published article from 1980 to 2012 in bibliographic and publisher databases including Pubmed, Google scholar, Cochran library, Web of Science, ProQuest, Springer, Oxford, Science direct, Ovid, Iran Medex and Magiran about the diagnostic methods for discriminating preschoool children with specific language impiarment from normal developing children were reviewd in this article. These keywords were used for research: “specific language impairment”, “SLI”, “diagnosis or identification”, “standardized tests”, and “tests for language development”. The results of this study show inspite of agreement of researchers and clinicians about exclusionary criteria as one basic part of the diagnosis of specific language impiarment, there is no consensus about the other part, inclusionary criteria. Different studies used different inclusionary criteria which can be divided to categories of clincal judgment, discrepancy-based criteria, standardized testing, clinical markers and markers from spontaneous speech samples. Advantages, disadvantages, and clinical applicability of each diagnostic method are discussed in this article.

Hearing is one of the most vital sensational abilities. Learning, which is the most basic ability for human compatibility to mental development, is affected by hearing ability. The main goal of this article was to review the effect of hearing impairment on educational achievement of hearing-impaired students, especially in the field of basic learning skills (reading, writing, and mathematics). In this article, the researches on the effect of hearing impairment on educational achievement were reviewed. There were 37 articles extracted from different databases such as Iran Medex, Scopus, PubMed, Magiran, Iran Journal, Google Scholar, and 12 credible books published from 1944 to 2013. In order to search in these databases, educational achievement and other related keywords were used. Hearing impairment affects listening skills, which is a mental process and is known as the first lingual skill. Subsequently, other lingual skills and learning abilities like educational achievement are affected as well. In order to decrease the educational gap in hearing-impaired students, it is very important to interfere in early stages and use of presentation methods to improve lingual skills in educational system.

Since utricle is the main damaged organ in benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP) may be an appropriate method to evaluate the utricule dysfunction and the effect of disease recurrence rate on it. This study aimed to record myogenic potential in patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. In a cross-sectional study, ocular myogenic potential was recorded in 25 healthy subjects and 20 patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo using 500 Hz-tone bursts (95 dB nHL). In the affected ear, mean amplitude was lower and mean threshold was higher than those in the unaffected ear and in the normal group (p<0.05). Mean amplitude asymmetry ratio of patients was more than the healthy subjects (p<0.001). There was no statistical difference between the two groups regarding mean latencies of n10 and p15 (p>0.05). Frequencies of abnormal responses in the affected ears were higher than in unaffected ears and in the normal group (p<0.05). Furthermore, the patients with recurrent vertigo showed more abnormalities than the patients with non-recurrent (p=0.030). In the recurrent benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential showed more damage in the utricle, suggesting this response could be used to evaluate the patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo.

Impairment in language content production, long-term memory and executive function in Parkinson's disease reported in several studies. Identification of these disorders is useful in planning for early interventions. The aim of this study was evaluation of semantic and phonemic clustering and switching in Parkinson's disease. In this study, 30 patients with Parkinson's disease and 30 healthy individuals evaluated that were matched by age, sex and educational level. Clustering and switching average were compared between the two groups according to the Troyer method. Data recorded and analyzed using independent t test and Pearson correlation coefficient. Comparison of mean scores of clustering between patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy individuals indicated significant difference (p=0.05). In addition, significant difference was observed between mean score of switching in two groups (p=0.008). The finding of the present study reveal that switching between semantic or phonemic subcategory and clustering impaired in patients with Parkinson's disease.

In the process of assessing the nasalance scores in patient’s speech, it is vital to know about normative data in the speech of normal subjects. The main objective in this study was to obtain normative data on nasalance scores in normal Persian-speaking children aged 3.5 to 6.5 years. In this cross-sectional and comparative study, nasalance was measured in the speech of 112 children (55 boys and 57 girls) in Tehran, Iran. After auditory screening and speech assessments, the subjects who get the sufficient criterions entered the study. Speech sample was obtained by imitation and repeating sentences (14 oral and 3 nasal sentences) and mean nasalance score was measured by Nasal view software. A mean nasalance score of 46.25% was obtained for nasal sentences and a mean score of 43.67% for fricative sentences, 43.41% for affricative sentences and 42.21% for stop sentences. There was higher nasalance scores in girls but the difference was not significant (p=0.201); there was a significant difference in nasalance scores between different age groups in stop (p=0.037), fricative (p=0.036) and nasal sentences (p=0.032). Findings of this study prepared good statistical data about nasalance scores in normal Persian-speaking children aged 3.5-6.5 years. The study also revealed that nasalance scores can be different in sentences with same manner of articulation and can be affected by presence or absence of nasal consonants and even age.

Students with borderline intelligence quotient experience types of language disorders that are seen in their narratives, too. This research aimed to investigate the linguistic characteristics of picture-elicited narratives in school-aged children with borderline intelligence quotient. In a cross-sectional study, 30 students with borderline intelligence quotient and 25 typically developing children at the age of 6-13 years were randomly selected from a population of four schools. Narrative discourse was elicited with description of pictures of one storybook. Students with borderline IQ were weaker than typically developing children in complex (p<0.001), compound sentences (p<0.001) and produced more ungrammatical sentences (p=0.007). Students with borderline intelligence quotient produced fewer related (p<0.001) but more unrelated information (p=0.033); and types of cohesive (p=0.010) and "HAM" conjunction (p=0.022) was fewer in them. Students with borderline intelligence quotient showed more linguistic impairment in description of story.

Some evidence suggests that hearing impairment has negative effect on psychological characters of hearing-impaired adolescences and they are more vulnerable to mental health problems than their hearing peers are. This was a comparative study of social skills, life satisfaction and external and internal locus of control in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired students. T his multi-stage random sampling method consisted of 50 students with hearing impairment (boy and girls) and 50 matched normal-hearing students. The participants completed Matson evaluation of social skills with youngster, students life satisfaction, and Levenson multidimensional locus of control scales. The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed statistically meaningful differences in social skills, life satisfaction and locus of control between the two groups (p=0.002 for all). Social skills in normal-hearing students were higher than students with hearing impairment and locus of control in normal student was more internally. Training the parents and school-staff on development of locus of control and making it more internally in hearing-impaired students is suggested.

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder with several speech disorders such as prosodic and pragmatic impairments. Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) based on Albert et al. model (1973) is a rehabilitation method, developed on prosodic features. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of MIT on Persian autistic children’s prosody. An easy version of MIT, adopted for Persian language was designed by researchers. Then, after a successful pilot study on a 10-years-old boy for one month, 13 subjects were selected for the main study. All the subjects were autistic, male, right-handed, 7-10-years-old Persian children studied for 48 sessions (16 weeks). Background information gathered from the parents by a questionnaire. As pre- and post-test, some assessments about children’s fundamental frequency (Fº) and intensity of the Persian vowel sounds and declarative and interrogative sentences were accomplished. The data analysis was done using Praat and SPSS softwares. There was a statistically significant increase in acoustic features, such as intensity, and fundamental frequency of declarative and interrogative sentences; also all six vowels of Persian, excluding /â/ and /æ/ (p<0.05 for all). The widely reported unusual prosody in autistic children was quantified by this study, too. In addition, there was convincing evidence of the positive effects of melodic intonation therapy on acoustic features in Persian autistic children.

While most of the people with tinnitus have some degrees of hearing impairment, a small percent of patients admitted to ear, nose and throat clinics or hearing evaluation centers are those who complain of tinnitus despite having normal hearing thresholds. This study was performed to better understanding of the reasons of probable causes of tinnitus and to investigate possible changes in the auditory brainstem function in normal-hearing patients with chronic tinnitus. In this comparative cross-sectional, descriptive and analytic study, 52 ears (26 with and 26 without tinnitus) were examined. Components of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) including wave latencies and wave amplitudes were determined in the two groups and analyzed using appropriate statistical methods. The mean differences between the absolute latencies of waves I, III and V was less than 0.1 ms between the two groups that was not statistically significant. Also, the interpeak latency values of waves I-III, III-V and I-V in both groups had no significant difference. Only, the V/I amplitude ratio in the tinnitus group was significantly higher (p=0.04). The changes observed in amplitude of waves, especially in the latter ones, can be considered as an indication of plastic changes in neuronal activity and its possible role in generation of tinnitus in normal-hearing patients.

Aphasia, after stroke in the left hemisphere, is a common symptom. These patients often experience incomplete recovery despite intensive speech therapy. Direct electrical stimulation of the brain is a technique to stimulate the brain in patients with neurological and psychiatric diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of this stimulation on recovery of naming ability, working memory, and aphasia quotient and the lasting duration in patients with non-fluent aphasia. In this interventional study, 10 patients with after-stroke non-fluent aphasia were enrolled. Their aphasia quotient, working memory and naming ability scores were compared before and after sham and real treatments and two months after the real treatment. 10 sessions of 20-minutes sham electrical stimulation and 10 sessions of 20-minutes anodic and cathodic stimulation (2 mA) at the dorsal lateral perifrontal cortex was done for each patient. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA and Friedman nonparametric tests. The ability of naming and working memory scores were increased significantly after treatment and two months after it compared with before study and after sham treatment (p<0.05 for all). There was no significant improvement in aphasia quotient. The transcranial direct current stimulation can sustain improvement in naming function and working memory in patients with non-fluent aphasia. It can be used in the rehabilitation program of these patients.