Developing a " Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package" and Determination of its Validity and Reliability

Most of Persian lexical access tests have focused on picture naming and hardly attended to verbal fluency and connected speech. The purpose of this study is to provide a valid and reliable “Persian lexical access assessment package”. Methods and Materials: In this analytic cross-sectional study, we offered a lexical assessment package consisted of three subtests including picture naming (50 pictures), verbal fluency (Phonologic and semantic),and analysis of connected speech (speech rate, total number of word, number of content word, and number of nouns and verbs). A 9-person expert panel group offered their opinion about content validity. Reliability calculated using Cronbach's Alpha and test-retest. Both content validity index and Cronbach's Alpha for “Persian lexical access Test” was achieved 0.78. The correlation coefficient of test-retest for phonological verbal fluency was 0.69 (p-value=0.04), for semantic verbal fluency was 0.73 (p-value=0.017) and for items of connected speech analysis except speech rate was 0.70 (p-value<0.05). According to the high reliability and validity index obtained for the "lexical access assessment package”, it can be used in clinics. This package is capable to detect word finding problems in three areas including picture naming in visual confrontation, verbal fluency and speech analysis. The "Persian Lexical Access Assessment package" can be used for anomia diagnosis and following the post treatment changes in a variety of naming disorders.