Story retelling skills in Persian speaking hearing-impaired children Farnoush Jarollahi a , Reyhane Mohamadi a, * , Yahya Modarresi b , Zahra Agharasouli a , Shadi Rahimzadeh c , Tayebeh Ahmadi d , Mohammad-reza Keyhani a a School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran b Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies Professor, Tehran, Iran c Department of Epidemiology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Non-Communicable Disease Research Center, Tehran, Iran d Department of Audiology, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran article info Article history: Received 5 October 2016 Received in revised form 5 February 2017 Accepted 24 February 2017 Available online 1 March 2017 Keywords: Hearing loss Story retelling Child Language development abstract Objectives: 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. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in seeking ways to evaluate children's language in a natural context. In Iran the study of language development skills in hearing impaired children is mainly focused on the development of early language skills and story retelling creates a valid way for assessing the effects of cochlear implant on complex linguistic use such as pragmatics. Pragmatic abilities, which refer to the actual use of language, are an important area in language. A number of researchers have reported that story retelling creates a valid way for assessing pragmatic and complex structures [1]. Compared with other language tests, storytelling provides pro- fessionals with more information because it is a type of speech with descriptions and commentary, which requires complex skills and abilities, including congruence between auditory and visual inputs, attention and concentration, listening, comprehension, memory, sentence formulation and understanding of the plot [2]. The anal- ysis of storytelling provides a comprehensive picture of the child's pragmatic skills. In addition, children's pragmatic skills and diffi- culties can be screened easily and quickly through storytelling [2,3]. Analysis of storytelling can be employed as the best tool for screening permanent language disorders. Most preschool-aged children who fulfill the task poorly will show this flaw as a persistent academic impairment later in life [4]. Concerning the acquisition of reading and writing skills as well as those of social and communication, storytelling is also of * Corresponding author. Speech and Language Pathology Department, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Nezam Street, Shahid Shahnazari Street, Madar Square, Mirdamad Boulevard, Tehran,15459134- 87, Iran. E-mail addresses: mohamadi.re88@gmail.com, mohamady.r@iums.ac.ir (R. Mohamadi). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology journal homepage: http://www.ijporlonline.com/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijporl.2017.02.025 0165-5876/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology 96 (2017) 84e88