en گفتار درمانی Speech therapy پژوهشي Original Research Articles <div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objectives</strong>: Studies have shown that most children before the age of 5 are capable to comprehend and express wh-questions in daily conversations. This study aimed at comparing the ability of wh-questions&rsquo; production in 4-6-year-old children in spontaneous and elicited conditions.<br> Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, 72 (n=72) 4-6-year-old Persian-speaking children were selected randomly from kindergartens of Hamadan, Iran. Three different probes were used to evaluate the spontaneous and elicited conditions in the expression of questions with &ldquo;what, where, who, why, and when&rdquo;. In the first probe, children were encouraged to ask questions spontaneously about experimental pictures. While in the second probe, the verbal prompt was presented about wh-questions, and wh-words were provided as key-words in the third probe. Repeated measures analysis of variance test with between-subjects&rsquo; factors of sex (male, female) and age group (4-5 years, 5-6 years) and within-subjects&rsquo; factor of the method (I, II, III) was performed in the study.<br> <strong>Results</strong>: There was a main effect of probes in &ldquo;where, who, and when&rdquo; questions and the mean scores of the II and III probes were significantly higher than those of probe I. Children in probe I received higher scores for why questions than the other probes. &ldquo;What&rdquo; questions were expressed more by children in probe II. &ldquo;Why, when, and where&rdquo; scores were significantly higher for 5-6 years group than for 4-5 years group. There was no significant effect on all wh-questions.<br> <strong>Discussion</strong>: The higher accuracy of wh-questions in probe II and III compared to probe I suggested that this competence is significantly developed by the use of elicited procedures (verbal prompt or providing wh-words as key-words) in comparison with no elicitation.</div> Wh-question, Expression, Persian-speaking children 81 90 http://irj.uswr.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-913-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Rezvan Akbari Manie rezvanakbari@gmail.com 0000-0002-6442-2435 Yes Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran. Maryam Tarameshlou m.tarameshlu@gmail.com 0000-0000-0000-0000 No Department of Speech and Language Pathology, Rehabilitation Research Center, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Raheleh Izadifar raheleh.izadifar@gmail.com 0000-0002-5051-4451 No Department of General Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamadan, Iran. Saman Maroufizadeh saman.maroufizadeh@gmail.com 0000-0001-5794-3876 No School of Nursing and Midwifery, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran. Nahid Jalilevand jalilevand@gmail.com 0000-0002-4158-495x No Department of Speech and Language Pathology, Rehabilitation Research Center, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.