Effects of Aphasia Identification Cards on Service Workers' Comprehension of People With Aphasia

NCT06990997 | Recruiting

• 2 other identifiers: IRB #57831R21DC021233-01A1
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 160
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn whether healthy volunteers are more successful at understanding people with aphasia if they have first viewed an aphasia identification (ID) card. The main questions this study aims to answer are:

• Does viewing an aphasia ID card improve healthy volunteers' understanding of the language errors made by people with aphasia?
• Does viewing an aphasia ID card improve healthy volunteers' understanding of people with aphasia who make long pauses in their speech? Researchers will compare aphasia ID cards to a control condition (no ID card) to see whether aphasia ID cards improve healthy volunteers' understanding. Healthy volunteers will visit the study site for a single session (about 2 hours long). During the session they will:
• Complete brief tests of their vision, hearing and thinking
• Listen to sentences produced by a speaker with aphasia while their eye movements are recorded
• Complete a survey about the experience of listening to the speaker with aphasia

Conditions

Aphasia

Keywords

Aphasia; Communication partner; Service worker; Language processing; Language comprehension; aphasia identification card; eye-tracking

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• Comprehension accuracy for sentences with long pauses in the Service Request Comprehension Task

  Percent correct mouse-click responses on the Service Request Comprehension Task for sentences with long pauses. The Service Request Comprehension Task measures participants' comprehension and processing of language produced by a speaker with aphasia.

  5 minutes post-intervention

• Comprehension accuracy for sentences with paraphasias in the Service Request Comprehension Task

  Percent correct mouse-click responses on the Service Request Comprehension Task for sentences with paraphasias (word-retrieval errors). The Service Request Comprehension Task measures participants' comprehension and processing of language produced by a speaker with aphasia.

  5 minutes post-intervention

Secondary Outcomes (6)

• Visual attention during long pauses in the Service Request Comprehension Task

  5 minutes post-intervention

• Linguistic integration of words immediately following long pauses in the Service Request Comprehension Task

  5 minutes post-intervention

• Implicit repair of paraphasias in the Service Request Comprehension Task

  5 minutes post-intervention

• Rating of own patience on the Attitude Survey

  0 minutes (immediately) post-intervention, 45 minutes post-intervention

• Rating of speaker with aphasia's intelligence on the Attitude Survey

  0 minutes (immediately) post-intervention, 45 minutes post-intervention

Study Arms (2)

Aphasia Identification Card

EXPERIMENTAL

Participants will view an aphasia ID card for a speaker with aphasia. The card will disclose the speaker's aphasia, define aphasia, and request time to communicate.

Behavioral: Aphasia identification (ID) card

No Card

NO INTERVENTION

Participants in this arm will not receive an intervention.

Interventions

Aphasia identification (ID) card BEHAVIORAL

Participants will view an aphasia ID card for a speaker with aphasia. The card will disclose the speaker's aphasia, define aphasia, and request time to communicate.

Aphasia Identification Card

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years - 59 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64)

You may qualify if:

• Adult age 18-59
• Currently employed as a service worker
• Understand spoken and written English well
• High school diploma or equivalency
• Normal vision or corrected vision with glasses or contact lenses

You may not qualify if:

• Language disorder
• Hearing impairment
• Intellectual disability
• History of acquired neurological disorder (e.g., stroke or moderate/severe brain injury)

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Massachusetts, Amherst: lead
• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD): collaborator

Study Sites (1)

UMass Amherst Henry M. Thomas III Center at Springfield

Springfield, Massachusetts, 01115, United States

RECRUITING

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Aphasia

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Speech Disorders; Language Disorders; Communication Disorders; Neurobehavioral Manifestations; Neurologic Manifestations; Nervous System Diseases; Signs and Symptoms; Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms

Study Officials

• Jennifer Mack, PhD

  University of Massachusetts, Amherst

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Central Study Contacts

Jennifer E Mack, PhD

CONTACT

4135458468; jemack@umass.edu

Holly Laws, PhD

CONTACT

hlaws@umass.edu

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Assistant Professor

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: May 1, 2025
• First Posted: May 25, 2025
• Study Start: September 22, 2025
• Primary Completion (Estimated): August 1, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): August 1, 2026
• Last Updated: April 29, 2026

Record last verified: 2026-04

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL
• Time Frame: De-identified data will be available upon publication of related work or the end of the project period, whichever comes first, and will remain available indefinitely.
• Access Criteria: IPD and supporting information will be freely available on Open Science Framework.

Locations

US (1)