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Melodic Intonation Therapy for Tone Language Speakers

NCT04221386 · Status: SUSPENDED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 40

Last updated 2020-04-10

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

One of the traditional therapies for restoring the ability of speech in aphasic patients is Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), in which everyday phrases are taught in a singing-like manner. The suggested mechanism for speech recovery is that because of the sharing of brain resources for language and music, the regions normally reserved for singing can be trained to help compensate the speech functions originally subserved by the damaged regions. However, this therapy has primarily been applied to speakers of non-tone languages, in which prosodic features carry a more important role than pitch features in conveying meanings. It remains unknown whether MIT will be equally applicable for speakers of tone languages, in which pitch features likely play a more important role. Another uncertainty concerns whether the efficacy of MIT can be extended to patients with expressive speech impairment due to dementia. This pilot study aims to find out the efficacy of MIT for speech-impaired dementia patients in different verbal tasks. The results of this study will provide preliminary empirical evidence to establish the utility of MIT for Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT)

Subjects will receive at least 6 MIT sessions in group of 3-5 subjects. In the sessions, experimenter will sing songs with the subjects. Songs used in the intervention are familiar to elderly and are rewritten and embedded with everyday phrases and vocabularies. The whole intervention will span 3-4 weeks.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • William Shi Yuan Wang, Ph.D. · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
50 Years
Max Age
100 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-08-01
Primary Completion
2020-12-31
Completion
2021-02-28

Countries

  • Hong Kong

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04221386 on ClinicalTrials.gov