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Using Attention Training to Reduce Adolescents' Anxious Symptoms

NCT03973580 · Status: TERMINATED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 15

Last updated 2023-04-27

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

During adolescence, youth undergo rapid developmental change and in some cases experience increases in worries and fearfulness, although the mechanisms that underlie this change are unclear. Previous studies indicate that heightened Attentional Bias (AB) toward threat-related cues may increase fearfulness, and it may be possible to change AB using a computerized, Attention Bias Modification task (ABM). This study will recruit healthy youth with elevated anxious symptoms to index attentional tendencies toward threat-related stimuli using cutting-edge techniques, and to test the effect of a computerized attention training task in altering attention to threatening cues. The investigators will also examine the role of ABM in changing youth's attention-related resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), a neural marker of at-rest cognition.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) task

Participants will be presented with a fixation cross (500ms) followed by a pair of identity-matched, angry-neutral faces (1000ms). The pair presentation is replaced by a single arrow-probe (1000ms) in the position of the neural face. Inter-trial intervals (ITI) are 500ms. Participants indicate arrow direction (left or right) by pressing one of two buttons as quickly as possible. By responding to the probe that always replaces the neutral face, participants learn to attend to the non-threat cues and away from threat cues. There are 120 trials of angry-neutral faces in total, and 40 other catch trials with neutral-neutral faces.

BEHAVIORAL

Control task

The control task is identical with the ABM task, except that in the 120 angry-neutral trials, the arrow-probe replaces the angry face and the neutral face with equal probabilities (60 trials each).

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Western University, Canada

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Elizabeth P Hayden, Ph.D · Western University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
11 Years
Max Age
13 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2019-07-29
Primary Completion
2020-03-01
Completion
2020-03-01

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases

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 NCT03973580 on ClinicalTrials.gov