Objective Language has three components: content, form and pragmatic. The content includes the semantic components. Semantic knowledge of word relationships requires awareness of the relationships between different words in the same field and other fields. One of the main components of the semantic is the mental lexicon that many of the semantic communications, including the organization and semantic representations of words, take shape in this network. The important issue is how to organize words in mind, linking the words together and their position in the semantic network. One task that helps to organize the meanings of the words in the mental lexicon is the word definition task. The ability to define words is reliant o  several aspects of linguistic and metalinguistic  development, literacy, and academic achievement. The aim of this investigation was to study the definitional style of nouns in typically developing school-aged children. 
Materials & Methods In this cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical study, 150 typically developing school-aged children, selected using multistage sampling method, studying in the second to sixth grades in 1, 7 and 17 municipal districts of Tehran were included. The definition skill was assessed with word definition task. The students were asked to define the words, and their answers were scored based on content. The reliability was assessed by two independent values, and the validity was determined by the content. The results were analyzed by the SPSS V. 22 software using the methods of independent- samples T test, univariate analysis of variance and Tukey’s test.
Results The findings showed that by increasing the age, the noun definitions were developed from functional and concrete responses into combination two and using of superordinate terms were increased. The mean score of the content in word definition was significantly increased by age (P<0.001). Also the performance of girl students was better as they earned higher scores than the boys (P=0.03). 
Conclusion  On increasing the age, the content quality of word definitions improved significantly. The concepts were found to be organized into hierarchies of connections. Also, definitions were developed from functional and concrete responses into combination two and formal responses. And finally, the word definition task can be used by speech and language therapists in clinical and educational environments.

Objective: One way to examine a child's ability to think about language is by word definition. Word definition is a meta-linguistic skill representing the aspect of the lexical knowledge of a person about the nature and function of language. The success of a person in defining the word is indicative of the fact that he is aware of the use of language as a symbolic system and a tool for transferring information about the world around him and his own inner states, ideas, and purposes. The studies about word definition skill consider two content and form aspects within the development of vocabulary skill. ‘Content’ is the expression of the semantic features of a word that is expressed in a definition, and ‘Form’ is the syntactic structure of a definition and how it is formulated to transfer the best information which exists about a word in mind. Considering the importance of hearing sense on learning and use of language and meta-linguistic skill, the delay or problem in obtaining word definition skills in children with hearing loss is predictable, however, this question may arise that how is the quality of word definition skills in children with hearing impairment. The study aimed to compare the skill of noun definition in terms of content and form in children with Cochlear Implant (CI) and Typically Developing (TD) children.
Materials & Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, samples included 16 students (8 girls and 8 boys) with CI in the third grade of primary school (8-9 years old) by available sampling from Tehran Cochlear Implants based on inclusion criteria including education in regular schools, 100 Cochlear Implant training sessions, resolution Intermediate Speech was selected according to the Speech and Language Pathologist's viewpoint, not having a mental disability, passing a pre-school entrance examination, and failing a passing grade in previous years. All children before the age of 3 received Cochlear Implants and had hearing aid in their other ear and, according to their parents' statements, used hearing aids as prescribed by experts after their hearing loss was identified. Thirty normal children (15 girls and 15 boys) were randomly selected based on the following criteria: no hearing, speech, and language problems (being normal), no failing score in previous years, no psychological problems, and no lack of mental disability. Exclusion criteria in this study were the child or parental unwillingness to continue the test during the study. In this study, Mohammadi’s Noun Definition Test, which was designed and validated for Persian-speakings, was used. This test evaluates the skill of word definition of students in seven categories including animals, occupations, fruits, places, body organs, foods and transport items. The validity of Name Definition Test was estimated in the content aspect (r=81%) and in the form aspect (r=91%) estimated by correlating the scores of two independent evaluators. Data were analyzed using SPSS-24 software by Shapiro-Wilk and Mann-Whitney tests. All comparisons were considered significant at α=0.05 level. 
Results: The findings indicated that the mean scores of content and form aspects of Noun Definition Test were significantly lower in children with CI than their TD peers (P<0.001). The children with CI used significantly more concrete and functional responses in the content aspect, and had significantly less transitional and Aristotelian forms in the form aspect in comparison with their TD peers (P<0.001), while hearing children used significantly more Combination I and II responses in the content aspect, and had significantly more Clause, Transitional and Partial Aristotelian forms in the form aspect.
Conclusion: The significance of the means obtained in comparing the content and structural aspects of noun definitions indicates that children with CI have lower performance in both content and structure of the nouns than hearing children. It seems that the content and structural growth pattern of the definition of CI in children is almost similar to that of younger hearing-children. According to the results of this research, developing a coherent program to teach the noun definition skills in cochlear implant children with CI seems necessary.

Objective: Procedural memory is a key component of long-term memory that can be assessed in different modalities, such as verbal and motor. Learning through procedural memory occurs in three stages: initial learning, consolidation, and retention. Several tasks evaluate procedural memory, but none have concurrently studied procedural learning in various modalities and learning stages. Besides, according to the declarative-procedural model, there may be an association between the performance of individuals in procedural learning and their state of the grammar of a language. Therefore, this study aimed to design a Serial Search Task (SST) for the simultaneous evaluation of procedural memory in motor and verbal modalities during three stages of learning and determine its reliability. Moreover, the relationship between procedural memory and grammar skills was examined.
Materials & Methods: This study is methodological research in the first stage and descriptive analytics in the second stage. First, based on the literature review and the opinions of three speech-language pathologists, some words with appropriate psycholinguistic features were chosen from the Persian picture naming set. Then, corresponding pictures were determined. The task was designed using Java programming language. The face validity of the task was evaluated, then after revisions, the reliability was determined. Face validity was assessed in 10 normal children, and the test-retest reliability was evaluated in 15 normal children aged 7-9 years; all of them were chosen using the convenience sampling method. In the second stage, to assess the relationship between grammatical skills and the SST, 20 normal children aged 7-9 years were selected by a mixed sampling method. Every child had exposed to a verbal modality in three stages: initial learning, consolidation (24 hours later), and retention (one week later). Then the same stages were performed in the motor modality. Each child's language skills were determined using the test of language development-primary (TOLD-P3), and the relationship between the two skills was determined. Statistical methods included the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients and repeated measures analysis of variance.
Results: The correlation values between two performances in the initial learning stage for the reaction time variable in verbal (r=0.84, P<0.001) and motor (r=0.80, P˂0.001) modalities and the variable of response accuracy in verbal (r=0.81, P=0.011) and motor (r=0.77, P=0.026) modalities were obtained. In the consolidation and retention stages, the correlation values for the reaction time variable in verbal (r=0.737, P=0.002) and motor (r=0.743, P=0.001) modalities and the variable of response accuracy in verbal (r=0.624, P=0.013) and motor (r=0.916, P<0.001) modalities were obtained. The relationship between grammar and procedural learning in the verbal modality was significant in the consolidation stage (P=0.045, CI:0.016-0.797, r=0.491).
Conclusion: SST is a reliable task to assess different stages of procedural memory in both verbal and motor modalities. Therefore, this task can be used to evaluate procedural memory in normal children aged 7-9 years. The current study's findings confirmed the predictions made by the declarative-procedural model during the consolidation stage in the verbal modality.
 

Objective Children with phonological disorders are at risk of long-term reading difficulties. This issue becomes particularly complex when children are confronted with co-occurring language impairment (LI). Given that polysyllabic words include the most similarity to connected speech, the present study employs a narrative review approach to examine the relationship between errors in the production of polysyllabic words and later reading problems in children with speech sound disorders (SSDs).
Materials & Methods A systematic search was conducted on March 3, 2023, in four online databases as follows: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, and Google Scholar Browser. The search terms used were “polysyllable” OR “multiyllable.” Articles between the years 1952 and 2023 were identified and entered into the Endnote software. No restrictions were placed on the language of the sources or review articles. All sources about the relationship between the production of polysyllabic words and phonological awareness/reading in children with SSDs, and employing the perceptual method, in which the participants were under 18 years of age, were included.
Results A total of 1736 sources were initially identified, with duplicates removed. Of these, 72 sources on the production of polysyllabic words were examined in full, and five articles on the relationship between the production of polysyllabic words and phonological awareness/reading ability were qualitatively examined. The most valuable criterion that can determine the relationship between the accuracy of speech and the subsequent development of reading is the accuracy of phonological representation. To verify the accuracy of phonological representation, it is crucial to consider the type of speech errors and the complexity of the speech stimulus. Atypical errors have been demonstrated to be associated with children’s performance on phonological awareness/reading. The results of the present review, which examined the effect of the accuracy of polysyllabic words in predicting reading problems, demonstrated that errors of omission, atypical speech errors, and the accuracy measure of polysyllabic words accounted for the greatest variance in phonological awareness skills. 
Conclusion Atypical speech errors and the omission of polysyllabic words during the preschool period can diagnose speech sound disorder and subsequent reading difficulties, as well as receptive components of language. Polysyllabic words are more suitable for identifying children’s errors due to their greater phonemic information and similarity to connected speech. Consequently, it is recommended that they be included in the evaluation package, along with the phonological awareness test.