Document Type : Original Articles
Authors
- Masoomeh Salmani 1
- Masume Zareei 2, 3
- Marziyeh Maddah 4
- Mozhgan Asadi 3
- Fatemeh Esmaili Moqadam 3
- Sepideh Seyed 3
- Mana Aminian 3
- Reyhaneh Farajianpour 3
1 speech and language therapy, Neuromuscular Rehabilitation Research Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran;
2 Speech & language Therapy, Department of Speech Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, Jondi Shapour University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
3 Department of speech therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation sciences, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran
4 Neuromuscular Rehabilitation Research Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran
Abstract
Objectives: Children’s language skills develop based on the physical development and experience. During pandemics such as COVID-19, a lot of restrictions have been imposed on people’s life. Such restrictions may have compromised children’s life experience. This study investigated the rate of language impairment or LI among 5-year-old children after COVID-19 pandemic.
Materials & Methods: language skills of 340 5-year-old Persian-speaking children without any defects in the pre-school screening, no advice to receive speech therapy or rehabilitation services, and from all socioeconomic levels according to the maternal education and fathers’ jobs were examined in this cross-sectional study using the Farsi Language Development Test-3. The 1.25 standard deviation below the mean in spoken language composite score was considered the cutoff point for LI. The data were compared with appropriate statistical tests.
Results: More than 20% of children obtained standard scores below 6.25 in relational vocabulary, sentence imitation, and word differentiation subtests. Children language age in these sub-tests was three, equivalent to two years less than their chronological age. The spoken language scores in boys, in children whose mothers had lower education, and those whose fathers were private employee were significantly lower than their counterparts (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: This study showed rate of LI in Persian monolingual population increased significantly at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, such increase could be a consequesnce of COVID-19 circumestamces or the side-effects of this pandemic over families lives.
Keywords
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