Audiovisual spoken word recognition as a clinical criterion for sensory aids efficiency in Persian-language children with hearing loss

Development of Persian Lexical Neighborhood Tests

INTRODUCTION

Spoken word recognition (SWR) is a complicated process whereby through listening to a word or sentence we automatically connect each word's acoustic signal to its stored representations in the mental lexicon. We hypothesized that the children's performance on SWR would be influenced by the lexical difficulty and word length. The aim of the study was to develop the Persian Lexical Neighborhood Tests (PLNTs) as a lexically controlled toolkit based on the Neighborhood Activation Model to measure the SWR of Persian-speaking children.

METHODS

The research project was carried out in two phases (Weber and Scharenborg, 2012) [1]: development of the PLNTs (Luce and Pisoni, 1998) [2]; Using PLNTs in children with normal hearing. In Phase 1, to determine the lexical difficulty of words (easy, hard, and neutral), we calculated word frequencies and neighborhood densities for the words elicited from the 461 well documented language samples of Persian-speaking children aged 2-5 years old. Accordingly, four lexically controlled words subscales were generated by selecting appropriately easy and hard key words include: Persian Monosyllabic Lexical Neighborhood Test (PMLNT)-easy, PMLNT-hard, Persian Disyllabic Lexical Neighborhood Test (PDLNT)-easy, and PDLNT -hard. In Phase 2, The PLNTs were performed by sound field at different levels of signal to noise ratio (SNR) on twenty children with normal hearing between the ages of 6-12 year.

RESULTS

The participants performed significantly better on SWR using the PLNTs consisting of easy words compared to the PLNTs consisting of hard words and using disyllabic words compared to monosyllabic words. Moreover, the participants' performance on SWR improved overall with increasing the SNR levels.

CONCLUSION

The PLNTs is a lexically controlled assessment toolkit independent of vocabulary and language competency that can be used to measure the SWR performance in Persian-speaking children under spectrally degraded conditions.

Production of Infant Scale Evaluation (PRISE) in Persian normal hearing children: A validation study

INTRODUCTION

Production of Infant Scale Evaluation (PRISE) is a popular parent-report scale used to assess the pre-first word vocalization of children. There is not any tool to assess pre-verbal vocalizations in Persian speaking children. Therefore, considering the two important roles of pre-verbal vocalizations both in the early diagnosis of hearing impairment and in measuring the effectiveness of CIs and habilitation programs, we aimed to adapt and validate the PRISE questionnaire on Persian normal hearing children aged 3-18 months and estimate the PRISE's normative distribution for them.

METHODS

The research was administered as a cross-sectional study. Back translation method was used to develop the Persian version of the PRISE (PRISE-P). Six hundred and forty 3-18 month old Persian speaking children were recruited through consecutive sampling method. All of the children had passed the universal newborn hearing screening. According to the standard developmental test, all of the children had normal development. The internal consistency of the scale was measured through the Cronbach's alpha. The convergent validity was analyzed through comparing the PRISE scores with the Persian version of the Auditory Behavior in Everyday Life (ABEL-P).

RESULTS

The Cronbach's alpha value of the PRISE was 0.88. The PRISE corrected item-total correlations were significantly high ranging from 0.86 to 0.89. A significant correlation was found between the PRISE-P and the ABEL-P total scores (r = 0.628). There was a high positive correlation between the PRISE total scores and the children's age (r = 0.791).

CONCLUSION

The PRISE-P is a valid and reliable tool to assess the pre-verbal vocalizations development in Persian speaking children aged 3 months and more.

Audiovisual sentence repetition as a clinical criterion for auditory development in Persian-language children with hearing loss

OBJECTIVES

It is important for clinician such as speech-language pathologists and audiologists to develop more efficient procedures to assess the development of auditory, speech and language skills in children using hearing aid and/or cochlear implant compared to their peers with normal hearing. So, the aim of study was the comparison of the performance of 5-to-7-year-old Persian-language children with and without hearing loss in visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual presentation of sentence repetition task.

METHODS

The research was administered as a cross-sectional study. The sample size was 92 Persian 5-7 year old children including: 60 with normal hearing and 32 with hearing loss. The children with hearing loss were recruited from Soroush rehabilitation center for Persian-language children with hearing loss in Shiraz, Iran, through consecutive sampling method. All the children had unilateral cochlear implant or bilateral hearing aid. The assessment tool was the Sentence Repetition Test. The study included three computer-based experiments including visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual. The scores were compared within and among the three groups through statistical tests in α = 0.05.

RESULTS

The score of sentence repetition task between V-only, A-only, and AV presentation was significantly different in the three groups; in other words, the highest to lowest scores belonged respectively to audiovisual, auditory-only, and visual-only format in the children with normal hearing (P < 0.01), cochlear implant (P < 0.01), and hearing aid (P < 0.01). In addition, there was no significant correlationship between the visual-only and audiovisual sentence repetition scores in all the 5-to-7-year-old children (r = 0.179, n = 92, P = 0.088), but audiovisual sentence repetition scores were found to be strongly correlated with auditory-only scores in all the 5-to-7-year-old children (r = 0.943, n = 92, P = 0.000).

CONCLUSIONS

According to the study's findings, audiovisual integration occurs in the 5-to-7-year-old Persian children using hearing aid or cochlear implant during sentence repetition similar to their peers with normal hearing. Therefore, it is recommended that audiovisual sentence repetition should be used as a clinical criterion for auditory development in Persian-language children with hearing loss.