The effects of etherification on properties of sago starch were investigated. Hydroxypropylated sago starch (HPSS) was prepared in basic medium in ratios ranging from 0 to 70% v/w propylene oxide to sago starch. The physicochemical, thermal, and rheological properties of HPSS were determined. The highest molar substitution (MS) obtained for HPSS was 0.66. DSC studies showed that the gelatinization temperature and enthalpy of HPSS decreased with increasing MS. Starch with a high MS (MS > 0.15) exhibited cold water solubility up to 100%, with very minimal retrogradation and no syneresis during freeze-thaw cycles. Highly substituted starch exhibited different properties than starch with lower MS values (MS 0.1). Thus, hydroxypropylation could be used to modify properties of starch for specific applications such as coating of nuts as well as foods.

Background: Non-specific intellectual disability (ID) with a prevalence of approximately 1% is relatively common and has profound negative effects on language development. However, it has received little research attention, especially regarding conversational skills. Developing methods to detect, assess, and categorize conversational skills has created major challenges for speech-language pathologists due to their importance as part of adaptive behaviors in children with ID. Objectives: The present study aimed to examine pragmatic skills through a socio-conversational model, as well as to define the parenting styles of their mothers accordingly. Methods: A total of 21 children with ID and enrolled in preschool-grade 2 were included in this study. A comprehensive set of language assessment tools, including the Test of Language Development-Persian: 3 (TOLD-P):3, Conversational Rating Scale, Vineland Social Growth Scale, and Socio-Conversational Analysis of interaction between child-mother was administered. The descriptive indices, including mean, standard deviation (SD), and percentiles were computed using SPSS-24. The Spearman-rho was applied to search for possible correlation between conversational skills and general language indices. Results: The Means for non-verbal age (based on Leiter test) and chronological age were 4.43 and 7.98 years, respectively. According to the composite scores of the TOLD-P:3, children with ID scored below 69, except for semantics. Their language age for eight subscales of the TOLD-P:3 was 3:04, but it was 5:38 for word articulation. The mean ± SD for different variables were: MLU = 1.95 ± 0.88, TTR = 0.64 ± 0.16, the number of total sentences = 14.52 ± 13.35, and the percentage of complex sentences = 19.71 ± 39.94. Over 60 percentages of the participants scored below average in social growth scale. All children scored as “no or infrequent pragmatic skills” or “pragmatic skills are emerging” in the Conversational Rating Scale. Two-thirds of the mothers had “authoritarian” parenting style. Conclusions: A remarkable delay in language skills, especially in conversational skills of children with non-specific ID, was found and highlighted. The most common parenting style was detected to be controlling style; due to the limitations of our study, however, no definite conclusion was drawn concerning the causal relationship between parenting style and children’s language delays. Children with ID played different roles during interaction, but most of them were inclined to be “passive conversationalist”.

Introduction: Down syndrome (DS) as a chromosomal abnormality has different symptoms including cognitive problems and language delay.  Studies showed a heterogeneous profile   of language skills in this group of children. This study aimed to provide further information about the most vulnerable area of language -grammatical skills- regarding the unanalyzable utterances, clauses, phrases, grammatical morphemes, and mean length of utterances (MLU) in children with DS and compare them with those of non-verbal age-matched controls. Materials and Methods: The grammatical structures of 12 children with DS (non-verbal age=39 months) were compared to those of 50 non-verbal mental age-matched controls (non-verbal age=41 months). Clause, phrase, and grammatical morphemes were investigated through spontaneous language sample analysis according to Persian-language assessment remediation and screening procedure (P-LARSP). Results: Children with DS had higher percentages of unanalysable text units compared with typically matched peers (P≤0.001). The MLU, number of phrases and clauses structures, and inflectional morphemes were significantly lower in children with DS compared with typical children (P<0.001). Conclusion: Children with DS showed a noticeable gap in grammatical structures compared with typical children. The possibility of specific language problems in children with DS should be considered by future studies.