None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The study aims to evaluate the factors that contribute to the success of a Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I) program. Specifically, the study will look at whether the content (or topic) of the training scenarios in the program needs to match participants’ anxiety concerns (e.g., social concerns) to be effective in modifying the ways that individuals interpret information. Adults with elevated symptoms of social anxiety will be randomly allocated to CBM-I training that matches their anxiety type (using social scenarios), or CBM-I training that does not match their anxiety type (using fear of heights scenarios). All participants will complete a single session of CBM-I, with 60 training scenarios. Interpretation bias, social anxiety symptoms, and state anxiety will be assessed immediately before and after the CBM-I training. We expect that that the group that receives training scenarios that matches their anxiety type (social) will demonstrated greater reductions in negative interpretation bias, social anxiety, and state anxiety from pre-training to post-training, compared to the group that is assigned scenarios that do not match their anxiety type (heights).
Interventions
This study aims to examine the content specificity of Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I), by examining whether fear-domain match leads to greater changes in bias and symptoms than fear-domain mismatch. The study will focus on training adults with elevated levels of social anxiety towards positive and/or non-threatening interpretations of ambiguous situations. Participants will be randomly assigned to training scenarios that are relevant to social anxiety (content specific), o
This study aims to examine the content specificity of Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I), by examining whether fear-domain match leads to greater changes in bias and symptoms than fear-domain mismatch. The study will focus on training adults with elevated levels of social anxiety towards positive and/or non-threatening interpretations of ambiguous situations. Participants will be randomly assigned to training scenarios that are relevant to social anxiety (content specific), or training scenarios that are associated with an irrelevant fear domain (fear of heights; non content specific). The intervention will be a single session of CBM-I. The CBM-I intervention is expected to take approximately 60 minutes. Participants allocated to the intervention group will receive the CBM-I intervention with training scenarios that are relevant to social anxiety. Participants allocated to the control group will receive the CBM-I intervention with training scenarios that are related to an irrelevant fear domain (fear of heights). Participants will complete the intervention on a computer in a lab at Macquarie University. The intervention will be delivered via computer, with no direct experimenter involvement. One of the researchers will supervise each session in case of participant distress. During the single-session intervention, participants will be presented with 60 ambiguous scenarios. During every trial, participants will be presented with a short 2-3 sentence scenario describing an uncertain situation that might happen to them. A benign or positive interpretation of the scenario is induced by the participant completing a word fragment (by typing a missing letter) which disambiguates the sentence. Next, a comprehension question is posed to check their understanding. This also accentuates the benign or positive interpretation of the scenario. All participants in the intervention group will receive the same scenarios. All participants in the control group will receive the same scenarios. An example of an ambiguous social scenario is provided below: Scenario: You are giving a presentation in class. Everyone is staring at you as you speak. They are staring at you because you sound Word fragment: inter_sting (missing letter = e) Comprehension question: Is everyone staring at you because you sound interesting? (correct answer = yes)
Sponsors
Emily Daniel
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Subject)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
To be eligible for this study, participants will be required to meet the following criteria: 1) Aged 18 years and above 2) Fluent in English 3) Elevated symptoms of social anxiety (based on a cut off score on validated scales)
Exclusion criteria
1) No identified fear of heights
Outcome results
None listed