Comparing High Level Language Skill In MS Patients With Healthy People In Persian

Background and Aim: Language disorders are among the most important disorders caused by MS. Unfortunately despite the effect of MS on brain structures related to language processes, this disorder is not studied carefully because of being complex and invisible. There are different kinds of language disorders so that recognizing them plays an important role in preparing MS patients' language profile. One of the disorders is high level language skills' impairment. Finally this impairment limit patients' social life, occupation and psychological and physical functions (quality of life). Many language fields and cognitive processes are used in high level language skills, so these skills predict brain damages and special progressive dementia, and help speech and language therapists in plan and perform treatment program. Therefore this study aimed at comparing high level language skills in MS patients and healthy people in persian. Methods: This study was descriptive-analytical study with sample size of ۳۰ patients affiliated to Khuzestan MS association in ۲۱-۵۸ age range (۴۰.۸۰ ± ۷.۹۶ age mean) and ۳۰ healthy people (۴۰.۹۳ ± ۸.۰۲ age mean). Persian version of high level language test was used at the present study (internal consistency of this test in MS patients was ۰.۹۴, Interclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was ۰.۹۶, with P-value=۰.۰۰۰). At last obtained information was analyzed using SPSS۲۲ software. In order to compare the two groups, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was used. Results: Results showed that there is a significance difference between MS patients and healthy individual's sores in each ۷ subtests (repetition of long sentences, sentence recreation, inference, understanding grammatically complex sentences, comprehension of syntactically and semantically ambiguous sentences, metaphor comprehension and word definition) and total score (P-value=۰.۰۰۰۰). Conclusion: According to the findings high level language skill was damaged in MS patients. Speech Therapists should pay attention to language skills including high level language skill in evaluation and treatment and consider an appropriate treatment program based on these problems' recognition.

Keywords:

High level language skills , MS , language disorder