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Gateway for the digital version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (eCAT)

The eCAT is an online assessment for people who have acquired aphasia. It is an optional component designed to work in conjunction with the second edition of the printed CAT and can be completed over as many sessions as required by the participant.

This digital version of the assessment includes an online user manual, scoring booklet and a cognitive screen and language battery, and - new to this release - a concise Aphasia Impact Questionnaire which replaces the former Disability Questionnaire.

The online assessment comprises 3 components, which can be conducted individually to reduce stress on the participant.

  • The cognitive screen assesses a person's abilities across a range of cognitive areas known to affect assessment and rehabilitation.
  • Forming the main body of the test, the language battery provides a profile of performance across all modalities of language production and comprehension.
  • The Aphasia Impact Questionnaire is a pictorial Patient Reported Outcome Measure, which produces both qualitative and quantitative information.
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What is the AIQ and CAT?

The AIQ was co-produced with people having aphasia and supports the person with aphasia to give a subjective rating of how language difficulties identified in the Language Battery affect their daily life, enabling first steps towards goal setting.

The CAT helps the administrator track changes over the course of recovery and provides a guide to likely outcomes on the basis of an early assessment. It is supported by normative data on people both with and without aphasia, and extensive data on reliability and clinical validity. The CAT allows users to:

  • Identify underlying impairments
  • Find where to focus more detailed investigation, if necessary, using PALPA and other assessments
  • Ascertain the practical, psychological, and social impact of aphasia, from the perception of the person with aphasia
  • Create a profile of strengths and weaknesses to guide therapy.

Using cognitive neuropsychological models of language processing, this test is an indispensable resource for speech and language therapists and researchers. It provides significant subjective and objective information about people's language ability in a relatively brief test (designed to be completed in 90-120 minutes).

The eCAT comes with various benefits due to its digital format and presentation, including:

  • The ability to conduct the assessment remotely when either party cannot attend physically.
  • Automatically capturing and recording data, and the convenience of automated scoring for aspects where the participant interacts with the online assessment.
  • Data capture of supplementary information such as response times.
  • Providing a reliable method for administering the assessment with standardised presentation.
  • Allowing results to be downloaded.
  • Removing the need for forward planning as the digital format can be easily accessed online without the need to carry around a paper assessment.
  • The convenience of automated movement between the subtests and sections of the eCAT, without a large set of physical materials.

How to access eCAT in English

Register your interest in eCAT by completing the form below. This will be sent to our Customer Services team.

After 36 working hours you will receive an email containing a unique access code.

The code is for your use only, and enables you access to eCAT for one year with multiple patients.

Please then go to https://mearcian.online/Subscribe, input your unique access code and gain access to eCAT. You will be required to register on the site.

You will be invoiced for your purchase about 3 days after receiving your unique code. Please settle your invoice at your earliest convenience to retain your access to eCAT.

Your access is available for 12 months. Towards the end of this period, you will receive a prompt to renew your subscription by following the same set of steps, as you will require a new unique access code to continue to access your data and assessments.

All assessment data relating to your account will be deleted at most 30 days after your subscription ends and your account will be deleted if it is not used for a year.

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Frequently Asked Questions


To be determined

Instructions for administering the test are available as a downloadable document in the Documents section of Available Assessments (within Health Professional tab). Currently being put together by UCL.

No, eCAT in the English Language is only available for direct sale through the Taylor and Francis Customer Services team. Please follow the steps above for access.

Contact support@taylorfrancis.com

Each access code is linked to a single email address and assessments are linked to that email address only.  So, your assistant will need their own unique access code by following the steps above in order to conduct assessments. However, the email address attached to each subscriber account can be altered if needed to allow temporary account switching, please contact support@taylorfrancis.com , we will only allow a limited number of these changes and reserve the right to validate both your and the recipients identity.

This is currently not possible, however eventually grouping will be possible among different users so principal users can establish groups for data sharing.

Adaptations for eCAT in different languages are being developed. This page will give details on how to access eCAT in these languages as they become available.

Please contact support@taylorfrancis.com and we will endeavour to get the answers from the authors.

Use the link https://mearcian.online/Contact, there will be a contact form to fill in

Yes. If you would like to buy printed CAT, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Comprehensive-Aph-asia-Test/Swinburn-Porter-Howard/p/book/9780367761615 to place your order through the Routledge ecommerce site. (Please note, this is only for purchases of the printed CAT. To purchase eCAT, please follow the steps above).

No.  The content of eCAT and the printed CAT-2nd edition are the same.  They differ only in format and presentation. However, eCAT will require a subscription renewal after 12 months, whereas printed CAT is a one-off purchase for perpetual use.

You will be sent an automatic renew reminder by support@mearcian.online.  You follow the same steps as on initial registration.

Yes, you will always have access to the latest version of the current edition.

Access the assessment you wish to locate the results for and click the download button, the results will download as a CSV (Excel) file. Alternatively, you can have the site send you the results to your registered email address.

Yes, it will only store data you or the participant enter, it does not require any personally identifiable data other than your email address (and optionally any extra details you add for example a signature you want attached to emails) and partial participant email addresses should you decide to send them a link to the assessment.

The site will generate a single use unique reference code for each assessment, it is up to you as the assessment administrator to note down this code and store it, alternatively, you can supply your own participant identifier (which we strongly recommend is not personally identifiable).

Create a participant identifier which you keep with your records and enter each time you conduct an assessment, download (or have emailed to yourself) the results of each assessment. Each result set contains details about the assessment including the date commenced and concluded, version reference code and participant code.

Yes, you can take a break (or multiple breaks) at any point in time, the only restriction is the gap between sessions can be no longer than 30 days (you will be able to configure it for a shorter period) after which the data is deleted. You will be required to re-enter the reference code if the session has not been used for more than 10 minutes.

Yes, so long as the assessment has been worked on or completed within the last 30 days (or shorter if configured) and you have an active subscription. For security purposes all participant data is automatically deleted 30 days, you will be sent an alert a few days before the data is deleted.

You can visit the FAQ section on Mearcian Online (https://mearcian.online/FAQ) and select the Health Professionals tab.