Interpersonal Conflict, Mental Health, Personality Disorder, Social Cognition
Conditions
Keywords
Mental Health, Multi-informant EMA, Neuroimaging, fMRI, Informant, Multi-method, Ecological Momentary Assessment, Self-report, Longitudinal
Brief summary
The purpose of this study is to understand brain function, how people make decisions when they interact with others, and how brain function and behavior relate to personality traits.
Detailed description
Problems in cooperating with others define antagonism, a transdiagnostic dimension of psychopathology expressed in personality and externalizing disorders. People high on antagonism are prone to aggressive, callous, and exploitative behaviors that damage relationships and incur substantial costs in the form of productivity loss, substance misuse, and criminality. While clinical theories link antagonism to deficits in social cognition, it is hard to deny that exploiting others requires an understanding of their mind. This apparent contradiction can be resolved by distinguishing between two facets of antagonism: callousness and exploitativeness. Prior work by the investigators and preliminary data inform the hypothesis that exploitativeness reflects an enhanced capacity to learn about the mental states and behaviors of others coupled with an increased sensitivity to personal, rather than shared, rewards. In contrast, callousness reflects a broader insensitivity to social feedback. The investigators hypothesize that these dissociable social learning processes are instantiated in canonical circuits that expanded during anthropogenesis to support mentalizing and self-directed thought. These learning signals, which track behaviorally salient features of the social environment, are integrated in the posterior hub of the default network (DN) where they drive adaptive cooperation. This study proposes to test these hypotheses in two samples elevated on antagonism. At the behavioral level, participants are characterized using a battery of personality and psychopathology measures, social and reward-based decision-making tasks, and corresponding hierarchically estimated reinforcement learning (RL) models (Aim 1). In a model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, model-derived learning signals and facets of antagonism are linked to underlying neural activity during cooperative decision-making (Aim 2). Leveraging the multi-timescale design of our study, the investigators plan to relate neurocomputational signatures of callousness and exploitativeness to mentalizing abilities, multi-informant reports of momentary interpersonal behavior, and prospective stress generation. Certain elements of study design are withheld from this record to protect the scientific integrity of the study design.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALSocial Learning Task Battery, Clinical Cohort
In the primary study task, participants engage in a modified iterative trust game. The task is completed in the fMRI scanner and takes about 35 minutes. Participant choices earn feedback in the form of monetary gains or losses. All participants are debriefed on the motivation behind the task at the end of their visit.
BEHAVIORALSocial Learning Task Battery, Online Cohort
In the primary study task, participants engage in a modified iterative trust game. Participant choices earn feedback in the form of monetary gains or losses. All participants are debriefed on the motivation behind study task at the end of their visit.
Sponsors
University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Emory University
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Study design
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Intervention model description
The study involves three arms: the Clinical Cohort, Online Cohort, and Informants. The Clinical and Online cohorts will receive the intervention, a Social Learning task battery, while informants will provide observational data and will receive no intervention. The Clinical and Online cohorts will each complete a version of the Social Learning task battery specific to their group assignment.
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 100 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Online cohort inclusion criteria: * English fluency * US residency * Owner of a desktop or laptop computer * Adult aged 18-100 Online cohort
Exclusion criteria
* Participants who have participated in an earlier version of the study * Inability to consent * Self-reported history of neurological disorder or brain damage * Self-endorsed history of psychosis or mania Clinical cohort inclusion criteria: * Adult aged 20-60 years old * English fluency * Owner of a smartphone with celluar data Clinical cohort
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Participant-level Coaxing Score | During behavioral task visit at study baseline (clinical cohort) or during single online study session (online cohort) | Participant coaxing behavior will be measured during the primary social learning task. Coaxing will be operationalized as the difference in the participant's return rate between exchange and secrecy modes on trials in which the coplayer decides not to share. In exchange mode, the participant knows whether the coplayer chose to share or keep the monetary incentive before indicating whether they would return it. In secrecy mode, the participant must make the return decision before learning the coplayer's choice. The coaxing score is calculated as the exchange-mode return rate minus the secrecy-mode return rate. Scores range from -1 to 1, with positive values indicating greater strategic coaxing and 0 indicating no difference between modes. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Mean Informant-rated Momentary Manipulativeness | Post-baseline 21-day EMA period within year 1 of the study | Manipulativeness will be assessed using the study-specific Interpersonal Dynamics EMA Battery. The informant-rated manipulativeness scale contains 3 items, each rated from 1 ("strongly disagree") to 5 ("strongly agree"). At each assessment, responses to the 3 items will be averaged to produce a momentary manipulativeness score that ranges from 1 to 5. Higher scores indicate greater informant-rated manipulativeness. |
| Latent Mentalizing Factor | Baseline | A latent mentalizing factor will be derived using CFA, with participants' scores on three social cognition tasks serving as indicators. The latent factor will be standardized to a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1 in the study sample and therefore has no fixed theoretical minimum or maximum. Higher factor scores indicate greater mentalizing ability. |
| Interpersonal Stress | At 12, 24, and 36 months after baseline | Interpersonal stress will be assessed using the marital- or partner-relationship and other-relationship life domains of the Stress and Adversity Inventory for Adults. At each follow-up, the frequency scores for stressors in these two domains will be averaged to produce an interpersonal stress score. The score ranges from a minimum of 0 stressors, with no limit on reported stressor maximums. Higher scores indicate more frequent exposure to interpersonal relationship stressors. |
Countries
United States
Contacts
CONTACTMichelle M Berry, MPS
CONTACTAmanda Collier, BS
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATORTimothy A Allen, PhD
University of Pittsburgh
Outcome results
None listed