Emotion Recognition Training in Antisocial Violent Offenders With Psychopathic Traits

Emotional Problem Clinical Trial

Official title:

Emotion Recognition Training in Antisocial Violent Offenders With Psychopathic Traits

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03382808
• Other study ID #: SCHO 1448/3-1
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• First received: December 12, 2017
• Last updated: December 18, 2017
• Start date: April 1, 2017
• Est. completion date: December 31, 2019

Study information

• Verified date: December 2017
• Source: University Hospital Tuebingen
• Contact: Michael Schönenberg, PhD
• Phone: 004970712978355
• Email: michael.schoenenberg[@]uni-tuebingen.de
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial 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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 80
• Est. completion date: December 31, 2019
• Est. primary completion date: March 1, 2019
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: Male
• Age group: 18 Years to 65 Years

Eligibility

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

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Aggression
• Emotional Problem
• Psychopathy
• Violent Aggressive Behavior

Intervention

Behavioral:
• SEE 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.
• GAZE 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.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Germany	University of Tübingen	Tübingen	Baden Würrtemberg

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University Hospital Tuebingen	German Research Foundation

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Germany, 

References & Publications (1)

Schönenberg M, Christian S, Gaußer AK, Mayer SV, Hautzinger M, Jusyte A. Addressing perceptual insensitivity to facial affect in violent offenders: first evidence for the efficacy of a novel implicit training approach. Psychol Med. 2014 Apr;44(5):1043-52. doi: 10.1017/S0033291713001517. Epub 2013 Jul 1. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Animated morph task	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.	change from pre-treatment to post-treatment after 8 weeks
Secondary	Unconscious processing of affective facial expressions during interocular suppression in a breaking Continuous flash suppression paradigm	Change in processing of unaware/unconsciously perceived emotional stimuli as assessed by number of faces correctly identified	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)
Secondary	Eye-Tracking	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	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)
Secondary	Ambivalence Task	Change in interpretation of ambiguous emotional faces as indicated by number of hostile judgments	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)
Secondary	Emotional search paradigm	Assessment of implicit perceptual biases for and explicit categorization of facial expression in an emotional search paradigm (change pre- to post-intervention)	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)
Secondary	Affective prosody	Change in recognition of non-verbal emotional aspects of language as assessed by number of correct classifications	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)
Secondary	Multifaceted empathy test	Assessment of cognitive and emotional empathy (change pre- to post-intervention)	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)