Development and determination of the validity of Persian version of monaural selective auditory attention test in learning disabled children

Abstract

Background and Aim: Given the prevalence of selective auditory attention deficit in children with learning disability (LD) and the need for standardization of screening tests and diagnosis of this deficit in our country, the aim of this study was development and determination of the validity of monaural selective auditory attention test "mSAAT" in Persian. Methods: This study was a test development based on cross sectional method that was per­formed in two steps, development and vali­dation of the test and then the initial study. A four minute story and two lists of 25 mono-syllabic words from Persian word intelligibility by picture identification test was recorded by a male speaker. To maximize difficulty a 0 dB signal to noise ratio was used. After validity evaluation, 27 normal and 7 LD children aged 8 to 9 years were tested in both competitive and non-competitive manner. Results: Persian version of mSAAT had content-validity ratio of 0.91, 0.94, 1.00 for the first and second list and competing story respectively, and content-validity index of 0.88 was calculated for the whole test. Face validity was 4.16 and also significant difference was observed between test scores of the two groups of normal subjects and subjects with LD (p<0.001) that approved acceptable discriminant validity. Conclusion: Based on the obtained result, the Persian version of mSAAT appeared to have the potential as a valid measure of selective auditory attention skill and seems that it’s the same as the original test.

Keywords

• Learning disability
• monaural selective auditory attention test
• selective auditory attention