Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effect Of Music Syntax Therapy On Speech Production In People With Aphasia, Brandi Kordes

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Music is often thought to have medicinal or therapeutic properties across a wide variety of disciplines. The purpose of this study was to determine whether pairing linguistic phrases with the same structure, or syntax, of music affects the speech production of individuals with non-fluent aphasia. Prior to any intervention, four individuals with non-fluent aphasia were assessed to determine mean length of utterance and syntactic complexity in everyday (formulaic) phrases and less-frequently used (non-formulaic) phrases. They were also given a pre-test designed to measure their understanding of music syntax. They then received three one-hour sessions of linguistic syntax therapy and three …