Examining Interactions Between Persons With ALS and Caregivers

What this Trial Is About

Researchers are studying how communicative interaction affects verbal communication between people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and their caregivers. The study aims to understand the speech produced by people with ALS when they interact with familiar partners and how their speech changes over time as they practice collaborative tasks. This research involves both people with ALS and their caregivers working together to complete communication exercises. Participants will take part in two sets of interactive tasks, a pre-test and a post-test, two weeks apart. Over the two weeks, they will practice a collaborative word-matching task ten times, once each weekday for about 10 minutes per day. The tasks involve using tablets and audio recording devices at home, with instructions provided via video calls. Speech is recorded both through audio devices and remotely during video calls. The study uses structured and unstructured communicative interactions where participants respond to word and picture tasks together. During the study, participants will be assessed in two sessions of 60 minutes each, where researchers will measure various speech features such as formant frequencies, intelligibility, syntactic and pragmatic properties, and speech sound durations. The study collects data remotely and monitors speech changes over time. Participation involves regular short practice sessions at home and two detailed evaluation sessions. The total study duration includes the initial and follow-up testing spaced two weeks apart.

Examining Interactions Between PALS and Caregivers