Treatment Effect of a Modified Melodic Intonation Therapy (MMIT) in Korean Aphasics

The present study attempted to modify the conventional Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) in three aspects: number of syllables of adjacent target utterances (ATU), melody patterns of ATU, and initial listening of melody and intoned speech with the eyes closed. The modified Melodic Intonation Therapy (MMIT) was applied to two severe Korean aphasics. The patients exhibited a severely nonfluent aphasia resulting from a left CVA(Cerebrovascular Accident). The purpose of the modification was to avoid perseveration and improve reflective listening skills. First, the treatment program avoided ATU with the same number of syllables. Second, four different patterns of melody were developed: rising type, falling type, V-type, and inverted V-type. One type of prosodic pattern was preceded and followed by another type of melody. These two variations were to decrease perseverative behaviors. Finally, the patients kept their eyes closed when the clinician played and hummed a target melody at the initial stage of the program in order to improve reflective listening skills. A single-subject alternating treatment design was used. The effects of MMIT were compared to the conventional MIT. Differing the number of syllables and the type of melodic patterns decreased perseverative behaviors and produced more correct names. The initial listening of the target melody with the patients' eyes closed seemed to increase their attentiveness and result in a more fluent production of target utterances. Probable reasons for the effectiveness of MMIT were discussed.