Effects of three syllable durations using the melodic intonation therapy technique.

Five nonfluent aphasics were presented English phrases with three syllable durations; a regular speech, non-intoned duration less than 1 sec per syllable, and two modified Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) intoned durations of 1.5 sec per syllable and 2.0 sec per syllable. All subjects had the greatest number of correct phrase productions at the longest MIT duration (p less than 0.001) and the greatest number of failures at the regular non-intoned duration. Therefore, syllable duration is an important acoustic parameter to consider when using an MIT technique with severe nonfluent aphasics.