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Effects of a Brief Mental Exercise on Emotional Processing

NCT03698175 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 100

Last updated 2019-04-18

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The aim of this study is to explore whether a brief mental exercise (developed and widely advocated in the field of positive psychology) can change the processing of emotion-related information in a similar way as previously observed for antidepressant drugs. Healthy volunteers are randomly allocated to a 7-day practice of the "Three Good Things" (TGT) exercise or a previously used placebo exercise (unspecified childhood memory recall) with study participants as well as investigators being blind as to which practice is conducted. After a 7-day practice period, all study participants undergo testing with the Oxford Emotional Test Battery, an established battery of cognitive tasks that allow to assess how emotional information is processed. The working hypothesis of the study is that the TGT exercise, as compared to the placebo exercise, can push the processing of emotional information towards a prioritisation of positive (relative to negative) input.

Conditions

  • Emotional Processing
  • Mental Exercise

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Three good things exercise

Participants are asked to remember each evening three things that went well during their day and to write them down in a journal including a short explanation of why they think each of them has happened.

BEHAVIORAL

Placebo exercise

Participants are asked to briefly recall a childhood memory (no further specification) and to write it down including a short explanation why they think it has happened.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Oxford

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
TRIPLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
65 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2017-05-24
Primary Completion
2018-10-10
Completion
2018-10-10

Countries

  • United Kingdom

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT03698175 on ClinicalTrials.gov