MIT vs. Situated Register: A Discourse Analysis of Prosody in Clinical Settings

Kelley, Regan; Jachino, Andrea

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99867 Copy

Description

Title

MIT vs. Situated Register: A Discourse Analysis of Prosody in Clinical Settings

Author(s)

• Kelley, Regan
• Jachino, Andrea

Contributor(s)

Hengst, Julie A.

Issue Date

2018-04

Keyword(s)

• Speech and Hearing Sciences
• Aphasia
• Animal Assisted Therapy
• Melodic Intonation Therapy
• Speech Language Pathology

Abstract

Two million U.S. adults live with aphasia, an acquired language disorder from brain injuries. Although people with aphasia struggle to produce spoken language, they often do better when singing or using exaggerated prosody. Exploiting this, Estabrook and colleagues (1989) developed Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), a clinic-based treatment using intoned speech. Research has documented clinical improvements from MIT, but limited carryover to everyday communication. In contrast, Hengst and colleagues are examining authentic uses of exaggerated prosody in everyday talk such as pet register, the highly recognizable way people talk with pets. Sherrill & Hengst’s (2016) ethnographic study of a hospital-based Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) program found that all speakers (patients and others) used pet register to initiate and sustain interactions with the therapy dog, suggesting it is a robust and authentic use of exaggerated prosody even for people with aphasia. This study compares MIT and pet register by analyzing the acoustic profiles of 24 utterances: 12 pet-register utterances from Sherrill’s AAT study (6 from each patient and others); 12 MIT utterances from the MIT instructional DVD (6 each from patient and clinician). Utterances were matched for word length across speakers (patients, others) and type (MIT, pet-register). We analyzed pitch ranges of each utterance using Praat, comparing averages and ranges across utterance type and speakers. Preliminary findings from the Praat analysis show similar pitch averages and ranges for MIT and pet-register, but greater within-utterance variation for pet-register. Additionally, pet-register utterances are consistently identified as more natural and animated than the MIT utterances.

Type of Resource

• text
• image

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99867

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2018 Regan Kelley
• Copyright 2018 Andrea Jachino

Owning Collections