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.
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.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
DOUBLE
Enrollment
50
These training sessions aim to modify a selective attention bias towards threat and a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations in threatening ways
These exercises are matched to the task demands of the modules of cognitive bias modification training
Psychology Department
Varanasi, India
Psychology Department, Tribuwan University
Kathmandu, Nepal
Attention biases for threatening stimuli
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.
Time frame: Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention)
Interpretation biases for threatening explanations
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
Time frame: Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention)
Symptoms of emotional, behavioural and social problems
5 subscales of the Strength and Difficulties questionnaire
Time frame: Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention)
Acceptability of 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.
Time frame: Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention)
Event related potentials to emotional face presentations during Electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment
P1, N1, P2, N2, P3 event-related potentials during face presentation
Time frame: Immediately after the intervention (post-intervention)
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