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Background: Intelligibility refers to understandability of speech; and lack of it can negatively affect children’s overall communication effectiveness. Children with repaired cleft lip and/or cleft palate (CL/P) may experience poor speech intelligibility. This study aimed at evaluating speech intelligibility in children with repaired CL/P who had not been referred to speech-language pathology clinics for early intervention. Methods: Sixty-four monolingual Persian-speaking children, 32 children with repaired CL/P, and 32 controls aged 3 to 5 years participated in this survey. Their speech intelligibility was evaluated through the Persian Speech Intelligibility Test and was normalized on children 3 to 5 years. Each speech sample was heard by a speech and language pathologist (SLP), as well as 2 nonprofessional listeners. Two objective measures of speech intelligibility including Percentage of Consonants Correct (PCC) and Percentage of Intelligible Words (PIW) were used in this research. Results: Children with CL/P were significantly outperformed by their peers in PCC (p= 0.0001) and PIW (p= 0.0001). More than half of the case group had compensatory errors and 40.6% had obligatory errors. The PCC and the PIW were statistically different in children with different rates of hyper nasality (p= 0.001). Conclusion: Speech intelligibility of children with CL/P is impaired due to their articulation disorders (obligatory and compensatory errors). This survey documents the necessity for speech therapy for increasing speech intelligibility in this population.

Objectives: Identification of developmental disabilities in the initial years of life provides an opportunity for early intervention. However there are limitations in this procedure, like the lack of appropriate instruments. The purpose of this study was to develop a verbal and non-verbal communication screening instrument and determining its validity and reliability in Persianspeaking children aged between 12 and 24 months. Methods:Parents of 147 children aged between 12 and 24 months participated in this study. Prior to the data collection, we reviewed communication tests and texts in Persian and English articles. We determined the content validity by calculating impact score of content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI). Test-retest reliability was calculated within an interval of 1 week. Results:The CVR score for the first group was between 0.57 and 1, and for the second group, between 0.79 and 1. These values were acceptable. CVI score for both groups was within 0.79-1 range. Impact score for items in the first group was 3-4.7, and in the second group, 2.9-4.8. By calculating interclass correlation, the Cronbach α coefficient and Spearman's rho in two administrations within 1-week interval, the test-retest reliability was evaluated, which was acceptable. Discussion:The findings of this study show that this checklist has reasonable validity and reliability for both groups. The checklist is an integrated instrument for screening children who are at risk of verbal and non-verbal communication delay or disorders.

Background and Objectives: It has been shown that cochlear implant significantly improves verbal communication in deaf children. The aim of the current study was to investigate and compare the verbal and non-verbal communication abilities in two groups of deaf children: without cochlear implant (CI), and children using CI for 12-24 months. The results were then compared with typically-developing children as the control group. Methods: 87 children participated in this cross-sectional, descriptive analytical study, (14 deaf children without CI, 25 children with CI that their hearing ages were 12 to 24 months and 48 normal children aged 12 to 24 months). A reliable verbal and non-verbal checklist was completed by parents and nonparametric method was used for data analyzing. Results: The results indicated that non-verbal communication skills were similar in all groups with no significant difference (P>0.05). However, verbal abilities in deaf children without CI were significantly impaired compared to the children with CI and control group (P<0.05). Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the verbal communication scores of children with CI and normal children (P>0.05). Conclusion: It can be expected that deaf children who receive CI, will reach the verbal communication abilities of 12-24-month-old typically children, at least 12 to 24 months post-implantation

Objectives: Persian is a pro-drop language with canonical Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. This study investigates the acquisition of word order in Persian-speaking children. Methods:In the present study, participants were 60 Persian-speaking children (30 girls and 30 boys) with typically developing language skills, and aged between 30-47 months. The 30-minute language samples were audio-recorded during free play with an examiner and during description of pictures.Results: Object-Verb (OV) and subject-verb (SV) sentence structures were the most commonly used in two-component simple sentences. SOV was the most common three-component structures used by Persian-speaking children.Discussion: Despite the fact that the spoken-Persian language has no strict word order, Persianspeaking children tend to use other logically possible orders of subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) lesser than the SOV structure.

Background:One of the most common anomalies in newborn infants is cleft lip and/or cleft palate (CL/P). In spite of several studies about the prevalence of this, no investigation evaluated this prevalence in the West and North-West of Iran. With due attention to different ethnic groups in this area, the aim of this study is to investigate whether the distribution of CL/P live births varies regionally in this area of Iran.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted using hospital registry records to identify all children born with CL/P. The hospitals with a maternity unit were selected in the capital cities of four provinces in the West and North-West of Iran, East Azarbaijan, Kurdestan, Gilan, and Markazi. The population under study included all infants born alive from 2008 to 2012.Results:During the study period, 107,317 live births were registered in the hospitals with a maternity unit of four cities, and 52 infants (0.485/1000 live births) were born with CL/P. The prevalence in Rasht, Arak, Sanandaj, and Tabriz cities was 0.557, 0.352, 0.503, and 0.559/1000 live births, respectively (P < 0.05), and in cleft types (P < 0.05). Of the 52 infants who were born with CL/P, 24 (46.15%) were girls and 28 (53.85%) were boys (P > 0.05), whereas the prevalence of CL/P based on sex was statistically different among the four provinces (P < 0.05).Conclusion:This study shows regional variations in the birth prevalence of clefts and various cleft types. The different effects of gender on the birth prevalence of CL/P from city-to-city may be explained environmentally and/or by genetic factors affecting the development of oral clefts.