Recruiting

Aphasia ID Card

Sponsor:

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Code:

NCT06990997

Conditions

Aphasia

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18 - 59

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

Aphasia identification (ID) card

Study Details

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

Study ID

NCT06990997

Start date

Sep 22, 2025

Status verified date

Aug, 2026

Completion date

Feb 28, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Feb 28, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18 - 59

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

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)

Study Design

Enrollment

160 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Treatment

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: Aphasia Identification Card

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.

no intervention: No Card

Participants in this arm will not receive an intervention.

Interventions

Aphasia identification (ID) card

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.

Primary outcome measure

  • Comprehension accuracy for sentences with long pauses in the Service Request Comprehension Task [ Time Frame: 5 minutes post-intervention ]
  • Comprehension accuracy for sentences with paraphasias in the Service Request Comprehension Task [ Time Frame: 5 minutes post-intervention ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Jennifer E Mack, PhD

4135458468jemack@umass.edu

Holly Laws, PhD

hlaws@umass.edu

Locations

UMass Amherst Henry M. Thomas III Center at Springfield

Recruiting

Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, 01115

Contacts

Jennifer E Mack, PhD

413-545-8468jemack@umass.edu

Principal Investigator:

Jennifer E Mack, PhD

More Information

Sponsor

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Last update posted

Aug 14, 2026

Last verified

Aug, 2026

Keywords

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

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by University of Massachusetts, Amherst on 2026-08-14.