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The Effects of Phonological Short Term Memory on Lexical and Grammatical Production Skills in Persian Children with Developmental Language Disorder

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Abstract

The deficit in verbal working memory (vWM) skills has been frequently reported in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and may contribute to their problems in language. This study aimed to compare the phonological short-term memory (pSTM) and linguistic skills between Persian-speaking children with DLD and typical language development (TLD) to explore the role that pSTM plays in lexical and grammatical problems of children with DLD. This study included 32 Persian-speaking children who were divided into two groups of DLD (n = 16) and TLD (n = 16) within the age range from 6 to 8 years. The Persian non-word repetition test was employed as the measure of pSTM. Lexical and grammatical indices were extracted from narrative generations. Independent-samples t test was used to analyze the group-related differences in vWM, lexical, and grammatical skills. Moreover, the one-way ANCOVA analysis by controlling for NWR was utilized as the covariate to investigate the effects of vWM on linguistic performances. According to the results, the children with DLD scored significantly lower on NWR task and all lexical and grammatical measures, compared to TLD children (P < 0.01, d > 1). The group-related differences disappeared after controlling for NWR (P > 0.05). The results show that Persian-speaking children with DLD experience significant difficulties in pSTM skills, which affect their lexical and grammatical performances.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate all children and their family that participated in this study and all speech therapists who helped us by referring subjects.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Speech Therapy, School of Paramedical Sciences, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

    Toktam Maleki Shahmahmood, Fatemeh Haresabadi, Homa Kazemi & Somayeh Amin

  2. Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Pich-e-Shemiran, Enghelab Ave., Tehran, 1148965141, Iran

    Zahra Soleymani

  3. Child Language Research Cluster, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

    Yalda Kazemi

  4. Department of Statistics, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran

    Negar Eghbal

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  1. Toktam Maleki Shahmahmood
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Correspondence to Zahra Soleymani.

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This article was derived from a research project approved by the Ethics Committee of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran (Ethical code: IR.MUMS.REC.1397.166).

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Maleki Shahmahmood, T., Soleymani, Z., Kazemi, Y. et al. The Effects of Phonological Short Term Memory on Lexical and Grammatical Production Skills in Persian Children with Developmental Language Disorder. J Psycholinguist Res 49, 1067–1082 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09734-3

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