مجله پژوهش در علوم توانبخشی
سال هفتم شماره 5 (اسفند 1390)

According to International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), children with Cerebral palsy may have considerable impairments and limitations in all levels of body structure and functioning, activity, and participation in social roles. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of adapted constraint induced movement therapy (CIMT) on outcome measurements based on ICF levels.

In a single-blinded randomized controlled trial, 28 participants who met preset inclusion and exclusion criteria were divided into two groups: CIMT and the controls. Subjects in CIMT group were provided with the intervention for 10 out of 12 consecutive days and another group received routine occupational therapy services. Independent-sample t test and paired-sample t test were used for statistical analysis of data.

At ICF level of body structure and function, significant differences in shoulder muscle tone and forearm and wrist passive range of motion (PROM) were found between the two studied groups. At activity and participation levels, similar differences were also indicated in dexterity, bilateral coordination, bimanual coordination and Caregiver Functional Use Survey (how well & how frequently) (P < 0.05).

Implementing the adapted constraint induced movement therapy protocol through a child-friendly approach was proved to improve hand functions and activities of daily living.

Mild cognitive impairment can be considered as an intermediate clinical state between normal cognitive aging and mild dementia. Subjects with MCI represent an at-risk group for development of dementia. As younger groups of population become older, the need for developing tools that are capable of identifying suspected cases of the disorder in an easy and confident manner is strongly felt. The purpose of this study was to investigate the agreement between MMSE and MOCA regarding the identification of cognitive impairment in healthy elderly.

In this cross-sectional study, 47 healthy elderly subjects (25 women and 22 men) were examined. All subjects were resident in Shiraz and aged 60 years or more. MMSE and MoCA were taken within a 2-month interval (test-retest). Coronbach alpha coefficient and regression analysis were respectively used for determining the reliability of MoCA and its agreement with MMSE.

The average age of studied sample was 69.43 ± 22.5 years. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for MoCA was 0.780 at the first time of application and 0.721 on repeated measurement. Pearson correlation coefficient (r = 0.69, P < 0.0001) showed positive relation between test and retest conditions for this test. Lack of consistency between the MMSE and MoCA test was indicated through simple regression analysis (r = 0.602 and R2 = 0.362).

Results showed that there is not reasonable agreement between the two tests. In other words, although we can use MMSE instead of MoCA in other situations, it is not the case for diagnosing MCI in a healthy elderly. It seems that Montreal Cognitive Assessment’s high internal consistency and target population of this study which involved only healthy elderly individuals are the factors that account for the inconsistency observed between the two test’s scores hence inability of the Mini Mental Status in diagnosing mild cognitive impairment.

The acquisition of the lexicon is a central and complex component of language development. The ultimate goal of this study was to survey the expressive lexicon size of 18-to-36-month-old children growing up in Farsi-speaking families.

In a descriptive cross-sectional study, expressive lexicon size of 42 normal children with the age range of 18 to 36 months was evaluated by CDI (form II). Subjects were divided into three age groups, each of which covered a six-month period. The forms were completed individually by each subject’s mother. Size of expressive lexicon was compared across the three age groups.

Generally speaking, the difference of expressive lexicon size was significant among the three studied age groups (P < 0.01). Moreover, the categories of common nouns and grammatical function words comprised the maximum (P = 0.001) and the minimum (P = 0.02) proportions of lexicon respectively.

Study results showed that as children grew older, their respective size of expressive lexicon increased. Also, the variation of the vocabulary size for different lexical categories was wide at this age range.