title: Story retelling skills in Persian speaking hearing-impaired children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Since the pragmatic skills of hearing-impaired Persian-speaking children have not yet been investigated particularly through story retelling, this study aimed to evaluate some pragmatic abilities of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children using a story retelling test.
  
  
  METHODS
  15 normal-hearing and 15 profound hearing-impaired 7-year-old children were evaluated using the story retelling test with the content validity of 89%, construct validity of 85%, and reliability of 83%. Three macro structure criteria including topic maintenance, event sequencing, explicitness, and four macro structure criteria including referencing, conjunctive cohesion, syntax complexity, and utterance length were assessed. The test was performed with live voice in a quiet room where children were then asked to retell the story. The tasks of the children were recorded on a tape, transcribed, scored and analyzed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the macro structure criteria, utterances of hearing-impaired students were less consistent, enough information was not given to listeners to have a full understanding of the subject, and the story events were less frequently expressed in a rational order than those of normal-hearing group (P < 0.0001). Regarding the macro structure criteria of the test, unlike the normal-hearing students who obtained high scores, hearing-impaired students failed to gain any scores on the items of this section.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results suggest that Hearing-impaired children were not able to use language as effectively as their hearing peers, and they utilized quite different pragmatic functions.
authors.affiliation: School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Farnoush
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jarollahi
authors.affiliation: School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran. Electronic address: mohamadi.re88@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Reyhane
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mohamadi
authors.affiliation: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies Professor, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Yahya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Modarresi
authors.affiliation: School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Agharasouli
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Non-Communicable Disease Research Center, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Shadi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rahimzadeh
authors.affiliation: Department of Audiology, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Tayebeh
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ahmadi
authors.affiliation: School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad-Reza
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Keyhani
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D019071:Persia; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Child; Hearing loss; Language development; Story retelling