This study examined the effectiveness of an adaptation of Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) in increasing the communicative speech of young children with Down syndrome. Eight children were matched according to their mean length of utterance and divided into two groups, the melodic group and the spoken group. The same individual treatment was received by all during twelve weekly sessions, except for the manner in which target phrases were presented: spoken versus melodically intoned. Data was collected from language samples taken before and after treatment as well as from audiotapes of the children's verbal responses produced during the weekly sessions. Findings revealed greater gains for the melodic group than for the spoken group for total verbal output, length of response and production time, thereby providing evidence for the positive effect of MIT. Implications for future research were addressed and applications for implementing MIT with young children were discussed.

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The objectives of this study were: (1) to develop an educational unit on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS); (2) to develop a handout booklet on SIDS from the content material of the educational unit; and (3) to identify a knowledge and attitude change, if any, after the SIDS educational unit was presented.A questionnaire concerning SIDS was developed and mailed to a 12-member expert committee. The committee was represented by the following professions and individuals: five physicians, two registered nurses, three parents, and two public health officials.The questionnaire contained two sections:(a) content statements; and (b) attitude statements. The committee members were asked to react to each of the 32 content and 25 attitude statements by classifying each statement into one of the three categories: essential, desirable, or non-essential. The statements reaching consensus (50 percent of the returned questionnaires) among the committee members as essential were utilized as the basis for the educational unit and evaluation instruments used in this study.The educational unit, along with the achievement and attitude instruments, was presented to the following five groups: (a) a squad of police investigators; (b) a class of emergency medical technicians; (c) a class of licensed practical nurses; (d) a group or parents; and (e) a class of community health students. The students were used as the pilot study group for the educational unit and evaluation instruments. The four remaining groups supplied the data analyzed in this study. A pre-post test design was utilized at each presentation to measure knowledge and attitude changes among the participants. Multiple choice and true-false questions were developed for the achievement test, while a four position attitude scale was utilized for the attitude test.The participants' lack of knowledge concerning SIDS, prior to the presentation of the educational unit, was indicated by the low scores on the pre-achievement test. The post-achievement test indicated all four groups retained better than 85 percent of the presented material. The participants' attitudes revealed a marked improvement from the pre- to post-test. Attitudes between Agree-Strongly Agree were constant on the post-test, in comparison to attitudes of Disagree-Strongly Disagree on the pre-test. An analysis of the evaluation sheets, given to the participants at the end of the SIDS presentation, indicated there were no negative comments regarding the content material, length, or presentation of the SIDS educational unit.This study recommended an educational unit involving SIDS should be implemented in the instructional training of all health professionals who may have contact with SIDS.

Asperger Syndrome was first described in 1944. Because of its similar presentation with autism it was subsumed under autistic spectrum disorders about 35 years later. The present study re-assessed Asperger's original article and identified specific differences between the two conditions leading to the hypothesis that Asperger Syndrome was different from autism. This was examined in four areas: cognitive profiles, cognitive styles, language and motor skills. A test battery of 11 standardised and non-standardised tests was used to examine the hypothesis. Medical consultants classified 50 participants, from 5 to 10 years of age, with autistic features on the basis of both the DSM-IV criteria for autism and Asperger Syndrome and, separately, Gillberg and Gillberg's (1989) criteria. The results showed very low agreement for either with consultants' overall diagnostic impressions, indicating poor validity of these three diagnostic instruments, which consequently did not allow allocation of participants into groups of autism and Asperger Syndrome. The classification was finally based on parental ratings using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), which showed a higher agreement with consultants' overall diagnoses. Schopler (1985), one of its authors, recommended that individuals with Asperger Syndrome should be subsumed under "mild autism", and this classification was adopted here. Eighteen nonsymptomatic controls matched on age and sex were tested on the nonstandardised tests. Significant differences between experimental and control groups were found in all four areas. The experimental group displayed a cognitive style characterised by rigid field-independent information processing in the areas of intellectual abilities, perception, language and motor skills. Differences between "mild" and "severe autism" were statistically not significant. This may have been due to mild presentation of autistic features in the whole sample, ambiguity of classification or other reasons. However the profiles of traits and abnormalities in both groups were not as would be anticipated from an all-inclusive concept of autism with varying degrees of severity but were more in accord with Asperger's suggestion that there are qualitative differences between autism and Asperger Syndrome.

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