Background and Objective: Mentally retarded children have global delay that affects motor, cognitive, communication, speech, and language development. Poor organization in mental lexicon and reduced vocabulary are the obvious consequences of mental retardation. This study aimed mainly at evaluating the perception and expression of nouns, and test-retest reliability of two picture-pointing and picture-naming tests in Farsi-speaking educable mentally retarded children in Hamadan, Iran. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional study included 40 mentally retarded children with the mean±SD age of 7.9±1.25 (18 girls and 22 boys) who were selected from exceptional children's school in Hamadan, Iran. In total, two picture-pointing and picture-naming tests were used in this study to investigate the ability of perception and expression of nouns. Moreover, to measure the test-retest reliability, 10 children were evaluated two times with one day time interval. Results: According to the results, there was a significant positive correlation between the mean scores of perception and those of expression (P=0.001, r=0.662). However, no significant differences were observed between the mean scores of perception and those of expression in terms of gender. The results of test-retest reliability showed an optimal reliability between these two tests. Conclusion: Descriptive statistics of the mentally retarded children can be part of normative data alongside other findings of other cities in Iran. In addition, confirmation of reliability shows part of the efficiency of these two tests in studies and clinical settings.

Background and Objective: One of the most important physical properties of vowels is their formant structure. One of the most obvious speech errors in hearingimpaired children is vowel errors. The present study aimed to determine and compare the formant structure of Persian vowels in deaf and cochlear implant children in the age range of 4-7 years. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study was performed on 21 children with serious hearing impairment and 17 children with cochlear implants in the age range of 4-7 years. After considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the vowel production test was administered. The first and second formant of each of the six vowels were obtained separately by Praat software and compared between the two groups. Results: There was a significant difference between deaf children and those with cochlear implants in the mean of the first and second formant of the /o/, as well as the mean of the first formant of the /i /, /a/, and /e / (P<0.05). Other vowel formants of the /ae/ and /u/ displayed no significant difference between the two groups (P>0.05). Conclusion:As evidenced by the results of this study, the first formant of Persian language vowels related to tongue height was different in the two groups. It signifies that the vowels in cochlear implant children are closer to normal, compared to those in hearing-impaired children with hearing aids.

Objectives: It seems that psycho-physical factors of stroke patients undergoing tDCS treatment can affect implicit motor learning process in patient with stroke. The aim of this study was to determine the effects and adverse effects of tDCS on motor learning process in chronic unilateral stroke patients. Methods & Materials: This crossover, sham-controlled, randomized, blinded study was conducted in 2017 on 12 patients with chronic unilateral stroke (mean age, 60.33±1.87 years), (The mean time elapsed since the onset of the disease, 1.96±1.36 years) referred to Mobasher Kashani clinic in Hamadan, Iran who were selected using a convenience sampling technique. Patients were randomly divided in to 2 groups: experimental (dual tDCS + SRTT) (n = 6) and sham (sham tDCS + SRTT) (n = 6) groups. After 3 weeks of washing out period, patients in each group were treated in other brain stimulation group again. Data were collected using the record of reaction time and error of sequenced blocks by related software. Also, adverse effects of tDCS, pain or discomfort, attention and fatigue of patients were assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS) questionnaire. The data were analyzed using linear mixed effects. Results: Data analysis showed a considerable improvement in implicit motor learning in both brain stimulation groups. The most reported sensations were itching and tingling, which continued during all stimulation sessions. The pain or discomfort of the patients was negligible during the intervention sessions. Moreover, the type of brain stimulation, the time and their interaction had no significant effect on the fatigue, attention and pain of the patients (P>0.05). Conclusion: Dual-tDCS technique does not cause serious adverse effects in patients with stroke. It can be used as an effective and useful therapeutic strategy for increase in implicit motor learning in chronic stroke patients.

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Background: Post-stroke persons with aphasia (PWA) may suffer from deficits in executive function (EF). Cognitive flexibility, as an important element of EF, may be affected by PWA. As a task of cognitive flexibility, set-shifting can be measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Assessing these EF basics may have important implications for cognitive-communicative rehabilitation of PWA. Objectives:The aim of the current study was to examine set-shifting skills and their correlation with language components of Persian-speaking PWA.Methods: Nineteen Persian-speaking, non-fluent PWA (13 males and six females; mean age was 54.26 ± 8.88 years, and age range was 32 to 69 years old) participated in this study. The bedside version of the Persian Western Aphasia Battery (P-WAB-1) and the WCST were performed to assess language and set-shifting abilities, respectively. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficient test was used to examine the correlation between the variables. Statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS 18.0 software. Results: The results showed that the P-WAB-1 score was inversely correlated with perseverative errors index of WCST (r = -0.48, P < 0.05). Also, there was a significant correlation between the "fluency of spontaneous speech" subtest of P-WAB-1 and WCST indices, including number of categories completed (r = 0.54, P < 0.05), total number of correct responses (r = 0.61, P < 0.05), total number of errors (r = -0.60, P < 0.05), and non-perseverative errors (r = -0.44, P < 0.05). Conclusions: Based on these results, it appears that decreased cognitive flexibility of PWA may coincide with decreased language ability. This study broadens current understanding of the complex relationship between language and EF by measuring set-shifting in a sample of non-fluent PWA. These results may be beneficial to cognitive-communicative rehabilitation programs for PWA.