Emotional Problem, Psychopathy, Violent Aggressive Behavior
Conditions
Brief summary
Impaired recognition of affective facial expressions has been conclusively linked to antisocial and psychopathy. However, little is known about the modifiability of this deficit. This study aims to investigate whether and under which circumstances the proposed perceptual insensitivity can be addressed with a brief implicit training approach.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALSEE Training
Participants are first presented with a fixation cross which indicates the beginning of a trial and is immediately followed by a bilateral presentation of a neutral and a fearful image (face) of the same model identity. The fearful expression is always replaced by an arrow pointing to the left or the right which remaines active until the participant indicates via button-press which direction the arrow is pointing to. The model identity, the position of the fearful cue and the arrow probe direction are pseudo-randomized across trials with no more than three identical sequential occurrences on each parameter. Each session consists of 360 trials in total, with 120 distinct trial types and three repetitions. Participants are trained with neutral and 75% fearful expressions only in the first session; the intensity of the fearful cue is successively decreased by 15% at every subsequent session.
BEHAVIORALGAZE Training
Participants are first presented with a fixation cross, which indicates the beginning of a trial and is immediately followed by a bilateral presentation of a direct gaze-image (neutral face) and an image of a neutral face (same model identity) displaying deviated gaze. The averted gaze-face is always replaced by an arrow pointing to the left or the right which remaines active until the participant indicates via button-press which direction the arrow is pointing to. The model identity, the position of the fearful cue and the arrow probe direction are pseudo-randomized across trials with no more than three identical sequential occurrences on each parameter. Each session consists of 360 trials in total, with 120 distinct trial types and three repetitions. Participants are trained with direct and 100% averted gaze images only in the first session; the intensity of the deviated gaze cue is successively decreased by 20% at every subsequent session.
Sponsors
German Research Foundation
University Hospital Tuebingen
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE (Subject, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
MALE
Age
18 Years to 65 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* Confirmed ASPD diagnosis * PCL-Score available * arrested for committing violent crimes
Exclusion criteria
* Insufficient knowledge of the German language * Diagnosed with schizophrenia * Substance abuse * Neurological disease (e.g. epilepsy) * Mental retardation
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Animated morph task | change from pre-treatment to post-treatment after 8 weeks | Morphed images are presented, beginning with the neutral face that progresses into one of the six affective expressions. This procedure creates the impression of an animated clip depicting the development of facial emotive expressions. Participants are instructed to press a button as soon as they are able to identify the emerging expression. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Multifaceted empathy test | pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment) | Assessment of cognitive and emotional empathy (change pre- to post-intervention) |
| Unconscious processing of affective facial expressions during interocular suppression in a breaking Continuous flash suppression paradigm | pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment) | Change in processing of unaware/unconsciously perceived emotional stimuli as assessed by number of faces correctly identified |
| Affective prosody | pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment) | Change in recognition of non-verbal emotional aspects of language as assessed by number of correct classifications |
| Ambivalence Task | pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment) | Change in interpretation of ambiguous emotional faces as indicated by number of hostile judgments |
| Emotional search paradigm | pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment) | Assessment of implicit perceptual biases for and explicit categorization of facial expression in an emotional search paradigm (change pre- to post-intervention) |
| Eye-Tracking | pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment) | Change in recognition and visual processing of emotional faces as indicated by raw scores and group means for dwell time, total dwell time, and time to first AOI (mouth/eye region) hit |
Countries
Germany
Contacts
Primary ContactMichael Schönenberg, PhD
Backup ContactMartin Hautzinger, Prof.
Outcome results
None listed