Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Victimization
Conditions
Brief summary
Adolescents who have experienced adversity (childhood maltreatment and other forms of broader victimisation experiences) will be randomly allocated to receive a 5-session cognitive bias modification training (with attention and interpretation bias modification modules) or a control condition. Outcome measures include measures of cognitive biases and symptoms of psychopathology; in addition, in a subset of adolescents, brain activity data will be acquired. All adolescents will complete a feedback form, upon which acceptability of the intervention will be assessed.
Detailed description
Up to 80 adolescents aged 12-18 years who have experienced adversity (childhood maltreatment and other forms of broader victimisation experiences) from India and Nepal will be randomly allocated to receive a 5-session cognitive bias modification training (with attention and interpretation bias modification modules) or a control condition over a 2-week period. Pre and post-assessment measures include measures of attention and interpretation biases and symptoms of internalising and externalising psychopathology. In addition, in a subset of adolescents, brain activity data acquired using EEG will be acquired either during resting or viewing emotional face stimuli. Data from these measures will be used to generate effect sizes of changes for each group as well as being used in a limited number of significance-testing analysis. All adolescents will complete a feedback form, upon which acceptability of the intervention will be assessed.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALCognitive bias modification training
These training sessions aim to modify a selective attention bias towards threat and a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations in threatening ways
BEHAVIORALControl training
These exercises are matched to the task demands of the modules of cognitive bias modification training
Sponsors
Banaras Hindu University
Tribhuvan University, Nepal
Institute of Psychiatry, London
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
DOUBLE (Subject, Outcomes Assessor)
Masking description
Participants are told that they will be allocated to one of two intervention conditions, one which may be more effective than the other in challenging negative thought patterns. Outcome assessors are blind to the status of the participant.
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
12 Years to 18 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* Adolescents aged 12-18 years * Adolescents who have experienced adversity (abuse, neglect) or broader victimisation experiences (conventional crime)
Exclusion criteria
* Adolescents who have difficulty reading or understanding what is being read to them * Adolescents who are currently at-risk for self-harm * Adolescents who are currently experiencing psychotic symptoms * Adolescents who are currently experiencing high-level trauma symptoms
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Attention biases for threatening stimuli | Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention) | The investigators will use an experimental measure (a visual search task) that uses reaction times (RTs) to different experimental conditions to index the degree to which attention is captured by a threatening over a non-threatening stimulus. |
| Interpretation biases for threatening explanations | Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention) | The investigators will use an experimental measure (an ambiguous scenarios task) that uses ratings to different experimental trials to index the degree to which individuals endorse threatening over benign interpretations |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Symptoms of emotional, behavioural and social problems | Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention) | 5 subscales of the Strength and Difficulties questionnaire |
| Acceptability of intervention | Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention) | The investigators have developed a 19-item self-report feedback, comprising quantitative ratings and qualitative responses. Across eleven items, young people rate on a 4-point Likert scale whether they found the training useful, satisfying, engaging, realistic, whether it impacted anxiety, mood, coping strategies, and other difficulties , and whether they would feel motivated to complete the sessions, including without a researcher present. Higher scores reflect greater endorsement. Each of these items will be reported separately rather than used to create composite scores. There are also 8 open ended questions for young people to leave their feedback on aspects they found helpful, unhelpful, liked, disliked, improvements they would want, and other general comments. |
| Event related potentials to emotional face presentations during Electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment | Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention) | P1, N1, P2, N2, P3 event-related potentials during face presentation |
Countries
India, Nepal
Outcome results
None listed