The development a homophone nonword visual memory task and the determination of its validity and reliability in school age children

Introduction: A majority of the children's spelling disorders occur due to mistakes in homophones. Relatively, this study aimed to design a visual memory task for non-word homophones and determine its validity and reliability among primary school children. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional and descriptive-analytic study, 341 primary school students were recruited. The initial 120 items were extracted from the Iranian children language by referring to the first-grade Persian literature book and Persian core vocabulary. After refining, 60 items remained from which the target non-words were made by changing or adding one or two homophone letters in each word based on the phonological rules of the Persian language. The non-words that received the highest content validity by referring to 18 speech therapists and linguists were selected as final non-words of the test (23 items). Content validity ratio (CVR) was used to determine the validity of the non-words. The reliability was determined by test-retest method. The comparison of the mean score of visual memory of the non-words was performed in terms of the number of their syllables. Results: CVR and reliability of the test were found 0.816 and 0.852, respectively. The mean scores of visual memory test of homophone non-words among the students were significantly different in terms of the number of syllables of the non-words (P<0.001). Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, visual memory test of homophone non-words has a proper content validity and reliability. Conclusively, the length of the non-word (number of syllables) can be examined as an effective factor in the student's mean test scores in future studies Keywords: Visual Perception, Dyslexia, Learning Disorders, Writing, Reliability, Child