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

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Status: Begins enrollment this month

Conditions: Aphasia

Treatments: Behavioral: Aphasia identification (ID) card

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT06990997

IRB #5783

1R21DC021233-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

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

Full description

People with aphasia often experience challenges conveying their thoughts to unfamiliar communication partners, which is critical for living independently and building new social connections. This line of research has two long-term objectives: to improve unfamiliar communication partners' comprehension of people with aphasia, and to support people with aphasia in advocating for their communication needs. This project addresses these goals with a focus on service workers, who interact directly with customers to provide goods, services, or information. Being understood by service workers is often necessary to complete essential tasks such as purchasing food and picking up medication. This project investigates whether service workers comprehend speakers with aphasia more accurately when they have first read an aphasia identification (ID) card. Aphasia ID cards contain written self-advocacy statements that disclose the speaker's aphasia, define aphasia, and provide guidance on how to communicate successfully. These statements have been shown to improve unfamiliar communication partners' attitudes (knowledge about aphasia, emotions, and behavior), which improves communication experiences for people with aphasia. This project tests the central hypothesis that, by improving unfamiliar communication partners' attitudes, aphasia ID cards facilitate key language processes that improve their comprehension of people with aphasia. This randomized controlled trial will enroll 160 service workers. Half of the service workers will view an aphasia ID card for a speaker with aphasia, and half will not. Then, all service workers will complete tasks measuring their attitudes, language processing, and comprehension of service requests (i.e., requests for goods, services, or information) produced by speakers with aphasia. Eye-tracking will be used to measure key language processes that take place while service workers listen to the service requests. The Specific Aims are to investigate how viewing an aphasia ID card affects service workers' attitudes, language processing, and comprehension when people with aphasia produce long pauses (Aim 1) and paraphasias (word-retrieval errors) (Aim 2). By rigorously investigating the effects of aphasia ID cards on service workers' attitudes, language processing, and comprehension, this project will contribute to the long-term goals of improving unfamiliar communication partners' comprehension and helping people with aphasia self-advocate effectively.

Enrollment: 160 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 59 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 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

Exclusion criteria

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

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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160 participants in 2 patient groups

Aphasia Identification Card

Experimental group

Description:

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.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Aphasia identification (ID) card

No Card

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in this arm will not receive an intervention.