Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) is a restorative evidence based approach (Albert et al., 1973) that uses singing or "intoning" to help with verbal expression in patients who display exceedingly restricted verbal output but still have adequate speech comprehension. This technique utilizes the right hemisphere's role in pitch, tempo and stress variation to improve verbal expression in clients who suffer from damage to the left hemisphere language areas (Roth et al., 2021). 

During melodic intonation therapy, only 2-4 musical notes should be used and the pattern of the musical notes should represent natural prosody patterns. For example, emphasized syllables will be intoned with higher notes. When first implementing this therapy technique, stimuli should not exceed 4 syllables and then slowly work up to phrases made up of 5+ syllables (Sparks & Holland, 1976). 

Ideal Candidates:

• someone with restricted verbal output

• poor speech repetition 

• adequate speech comprehension

• emotionally stable 

• good attention span

• unilateral stroke in the left frontal lobe

(Roth et al., 2021)

Someone with Broca's aphasia would be a great candidate for this therapy approach. 

Example Goal

Sam will utter short commonly used phrases consisting of 2-3 syllable words in response to questions asked by clinician at 80% accuracy given frequent maximum verbal and frequent maximum phonemic cues as measured by clinician data. 

Data Collection Sheet Example

References

Albert, M. L., Sparks, R. W., & Helm, N. A. (1973). Melodic intonation therapy for aphasia. Archives of Neurology, 29(2), 130–131. https://doi.org/10.1001/archneur.1973.00490260074018

Roth, Froma P., and Colleen K. Worthington. Treatment Resource Manual for Speech-Language Pathology. Plural Publishing Inc., 2021.

Sparks, R. W., & Holland, A. L. (1976). Method: Melodic intonation therapy for aphasia. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 41(3), 287–297. https://doi.org/10.1044/jshd.4103.287