Validation of the Persian Version of the Palin Parent Rating Scales.

INTRODUCTION: The Palin Parent Rating Scales (Palin PRS) is a structured questionnaire filled out by parents of children who stutter. It is designed to assess the effects of stuttering on both the children and their parents. The goal of this study was to translate the Palin PRS into Persian and to evaluate its validity and reliability for application in preschool children who stutter. METHODS: This research was conducted from August 2021 to December 2022, involving 139 parents of children who stutter. The parents completed the Palin PRS and provided their demographic data. Descriptive statistics were used to examine the floor and ceiling effects on all subscales of the Palin PRS. The internal consistency of the scale was assessed using Cronbach's alpha method, while the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was calculated to determine its test-retest reliability. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was also performed to clarify the factor structure of the scale. RESULTS: The Exploratory Factor Analysis results were highly consistent with the factor structure found in the original version. No floor or ceiling effects were observed for the factors of the Palin PRS. The three factors of the Persian version of the Palin PRS (P-Palin PRS) showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha>0.8) and excellent test-retest reliability (ICC>0.9). Additionally, normative scores were derived by converting raw scores into Stanine scores. CONCLUSION: The P-Palin PRS showed strong reliability, thereby establishing it as a suitable instrument for evaluating how parents perceive the effects of stuttering on their children and themselves. Further research may explore its application in diverse clinical settings and populations.

Effect of an Auditory Temporal Training Program on Speech Fluency of Children with Developmental Stuttering.

Objectives: The present study aims to investigate the effect of a temporal processing-based auditory training program on alleviating stuttering severity in children diagnosed with auditory temporal processing disorders. Materials & Methods: Thirty-one children with stuttering diagnosed with auditory temporal processing disorders participated in this study (intervention group: 17 participants between seven to 12 years old; control group: 14 participants between eight to 12 years old). The auditory temporal processing test and Stuttering Severity Instrument-3 (SSI-3) were examined before/after 12 sessions (nearly 540 minutes) of training and three months following the conclusion of the intervention. Results: According to the results, auditory temporal processing improved significantly in the intervention group after temporal processing-based auditory training. Besides, the differences between the intervention and control groups were significant (P<0.05). The improvement of auditory temporal processing skills remained stable in the post-training evaluation after three months (P>0.05). Although the SSI-3 score was somewhat improved in the intervention group, no significant difference was found between the two groups (P=0.984). Conclusion: The findings revealed that auditory temporal processing training acted as a complementary therapy alleviating the stuttering severity of children who stutter with auditory temporal processing disorders to some extent.

Lexical-semantic processing of action verbs and non-action nouns in Persian speakers: Behavioral evidence from the semantic similarity judgment task.

The processing of sensory-motor aspect of word's meaning, and its difference between nouns and verbs, is the main topic of neurolinguistic research. The present study aimed to examine the lexical-semantic processing of Persian non-action nouns and action verbs. The possible effects of semantic correlates on noun/verb dissociation were evaluated without morphological confound. A total of 62 neurologically intact Persian speakers responded to a computerized semantic similarity judgment task, including 34 triplets of non-action nouns and 34 triplets of action verbs by pressing a key. Response Time (RT) and percentage error were considered as indirect measures of lexical-semantic encoding efficiency. We also assessed the latency of hand movement execution with no linguistic demand. The results showed that action verbs elicited more errors and had slower RT compared with object nouns. Mixed ANOVA revealed that the observed noun/verb distinction was not affected by demographic factors. These results provided evidence that the lexical-semantic encoding of Persian action verbs, compared to non-action nouns, requires more support from cognitive sources during the processing of the motor - related semantic feature. The possible accounts for the different processing of action verbs in terms of semantic view are suggested.

Validity of telephone calls to assess percentage of syllables stuttered with adolescents in clinical research.

PURPOSE: Karimi, O'Brian, Onslow, and Jones (2013) reported, for adults, no systematic differences between percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) scores during a 12-hour day and 10-minute phone calls. The present study replicated that finding with adolescents, using valid methods for the age group. The present study also extended that initial report by determining whether the gender of the caller influenced %SS scores. METHOD: Participants were 17 adolescents with stuttering. Percentage of syllables stuttered scores were obtained from a 12-hour day of the adolescents' lives, and two 10-minute unscheduled phone calls made before and after that day. One phone call was from a male caller and the other from a female caller. RESULTS: For adolescents, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and intraclass correlations (ICC) replicated the overall Karimi, O'Brian, Onslow, and Jones (2013) finding. No significant differences were found between the %SS scores of the three speech samples, and these %SS scores were found to be highly correlated. However, in contrast to the Karimi, O'Brian, Onslow, and Jones (2013) finding with adults, Bland-Altman plot results revealed a caveat to this finding when applied to individual adolescents. Additionally, there was no effect due to the gender of the caller. CONCLUSION: A 10-minute phone call can be used confidently to assess group mean %SS scores during stuttering research with adolescents. However, a 10-minute phone call cannot be used confidently to assess %SS scores of individual adolescent participants. For the latter context, such as with data-based case studies and single-subject experimentation, we recommend supplementing %SS scores with self-reported severity scores.

Auditory temporal processing assessment in children with developmental stuttering.

OBJECTIVE: Stuttering is a developmental disorder of speech production with a dynamic and multifactorial nature. Scientific theories mentioned the role of auditory processing disorder in stuttering. Investigating the auditory processing in stuttering would provide insights into the mechanisms of stuttering. The details of basic auditory processing in children with stuttering (CWS) continue to remain uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the auditory temporal processing (ATP) in CWS and also its relationship with the stuttering severity. METHODS: The participants of this comparative cross-sectional study were 54 CWS and 63 children without stuttering (CWOS). All children were between 7 and 12 years old. ATP ability of the participants was measured using the Backward Masking (BM), Duration Pattern (DP), and Gap in Noise (GIN) tests. Then, the groups were compared in terms of ATP results. The correlation between the scores of these tests and stuttering severity was assessed. RESULTS: According to the results, CWS showed poorer performance on DP, BM and GIN tests when compared with CWOS. Moreover, the stuttering severity had a significant negative correlation with the DP scores and percentage of correct identification scores in GIN; whereas it had a significant positive correlation with the BM thresholds. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that some CWS have ATP disorder, which could exacerbate their stuttering. These findings highlighted the role of ATP disorder in stuttering.