Pragmatic features in patients with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder. Despite the fact that communication and language skills may be impaired in schizophrenia, only a few studies have examined specific aspects of pragmatic competence in these patients. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the pragmatic skills of schizophrenic patients and a control group. Forty-three schizophrenic patients with a Mean ± SD age of 40 ± 1.21 years old and a control group were assessed using the Adult Pragmatics Profile (APP), which is a validated tool consisting of three scales: verbal, nonverbal and paralinguistic. The participants in the schizophrenia group demonstrated significant impairments in pragmatic abilities compared to the participants in those the control group. The most remarkable difference was in the nonverbal scale (5.00 ± 1.09), while the lowest difference was seen in the verbal scale (18.30 ± 3.91). Within the nonverbal subscales, eye contact was the most impaired. Schizophrenic patients presented with impairments in their pragmatic skills (verbal, nonverbal and paralinguistic). As pragmatic skills play a paramount role in social communication, it is of great significance to address these impairments to enhance patients' quality of life.

Effect of grammar intervention on vocabulary skills in children with a cochlear implant: A single-subject study

Background: Previous studies have shown that children with cochlear implants have difficulty in grammar acquisition. Vocabulary acquisition and grammar abilities are important during language development. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of grammar therapy on the lexical ability of cochlear implanted children.

Methods: Five children with cochlear implants and grammatical problems were treated using a grammar task designed for the current study. Before and after the treatment, repeated evaluations were performed using the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) and Persian Developmental Sentence Scoring (PDSS) indices for grammar and NDW and NTW indices for vocabulary abilities; these show the number of different words and the number of total words respectively.

Results: Grammar intervention was successful in cochlear implanted children of the present study. In addition, treatment of grammatical problems increased the lexical ability of all children; NDW and NTW scores increased, which was confirmed by the effect size indices. In the follow-up phase, the cochlear implanted children were able to maintain the increase in NTW and NDW values.

Conclusion: Improving grammar skills in cochlear implanted children also increased their lexical ability. Therefore, grammar therapy helps to increase the vocabulary of children too.

Language therapy outcomes in deaf children with cochlear implant using a new developed program: A pilot study

BACKGROUND

Cochlear implanted (CI) children have problems in most aspects of language and in particular with regards to grammar. Considering the lack of studies in the field of grammar treatment in CI children and bearing in the mind that CI children have the potential to develop language, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of treating grammar in CI children using a treatment grammar program.

METHODOLOGY

first, the literature related to grammar were reviewed so as to extract different grammatical components for developing grammar treatment program and to make sentences for each element as well as to compile a manual for its implementation. Second, the validity of the sentences was examined using the Delphi method. Third, grammar treatment was performed on five CI children. Persian Developmental Sentence Scoring(PDSS) and Mean Length of Utterance(MLU) were used to evaluate them before and after treatment.

RESULTS

Five grammatical classes were extracted, and the grammatical elements were classified in each category according to age. For all of the grammatical items, 2076 sentences were constructed. After applying the Delphi method, a total of 1936 sentences with Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W) of 71%, remained. Using this program, grammar treatment was effective in all five children. The PDSS and MLU increased in all five children during the treatment phase, which was confirmed by Percentage of Non-overlapping Data (PND), Improvement Rate Difference (IRD). During the follow-up period, the children showed that they were able to maintain the trained components.

CONCLUSION

Cochlear implants have the potential to learn language skills, and the present study confirms their ability to learn grammar, using a comprehensive grammar treatment program.