Contact information
Type
Scientific
Primary contact
Prof Marcus Munafo
ORCID ID
Contact details
School of Experimental Psychology
University of Bristol
12a Priory Road
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
+44 (0)11 7954 6841
marcus.munafo@bristol.ac.uk
Additional identifiers
EudraCT number
ClinicalTrials.gov number
Protocol/serial number
1434
Study information
Scientific title
Effects of emotion perception training on mood in undergraduate students: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study
Acronym
Study hypothesis
Previous research suggests that people with major depression have a distorted negative view of their surroundings. When compared to healthy controls, for example, they interpret ambiguous or neutral faces as being sad (Beck, 1967; Bouhuys et al., 1999; Leppanen et al., 2004; Naranjo et al., 2011). It has been proposed that this deficit in social perception may play an important causal role in maintaining depression, creating a vicious cycle in which the world is perceived largely negatively, increasing negative affect.
Our pilot work has indicated that it is possible to retrain how individuals perceive emotional expression. When viewing computer generated morph sequences that run from one emotion to another (where intermediate expressions are ambiguous), individuals see a change from one emotion to another somewhere in the middle. Training changes the point at which an ambiguous expression changes from perceived as happy to being perceived as sad. So, a face that was perceived by a participant as sad before training is perceived as happy after training.
We therefore hypothesise that the experimental modification of emotion perception, designed to induce a shift towards perceiving happiness instead of sadness, will reduce depressive symptomatology.
Ethics approval
University of Bristol Faculty of Science Research Ethics Committee approved on 28/10/10 (ref: 211010468)
Study design
Double-blind, placebo-controlled study
Primary study design
Interventional
Secondary study design
Randomised controlled trial
Trial setting
Other
Trial type
Treatment
Patient information sheet
Not available in web format, please use the conatct details below to request a patient information sheet
Condition
Depression / depressed mood
Intervention
Emotion recognition training versus control.
This is a computer-based intervention which presents faces on a sad to happy morph sequence. Participants have to judge the emotion of the face presented.
Feedback (informing participants whether they have made a correct or incorrect judgement) is used to train the participants after baseline measures of emotion perception have been taken.
Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups
1. Treatment (in which we attempt to change the perception of emotion)
2. Control (in which feedback reflects their baseline performance i.e. makes no attempt to change their perception of emotion)
Intervention type
Behavioural
Phase
Drug names
Primary outcome measure
Beck Depression Inventory ii (BDI-ii) score- Beck, A.T., Steer, R.A., & Brown, G.K. (1996), Manual for Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II). San Antonio, TX, Psychology Corporation.
Outcomes are measured immediately after the training week, at one-week follow-up and at two-week follow-up.
Secondary outcome measures
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) score:
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063-1070.
Outcomes are measured immediately after the training week, at one-week follow-up and at two-week follow-up.
Overall trial start date
01/01/2011
Overall trial end date
31/12/2011
Reason abandoned (if study stopped)
Eligibility
Participant inclusion criteria
1. Participants will be undergraduate students from the University of Bristol who are identified as showing higher than average levels of negative mood by scoring 14 or more on the Beck Depression Inventory ii (BDI-ii) via an online baseline screening questionnaire.
2. We anticipate that we will also identify students who have a history of depression. We will not be excluding these participants, but their data will be collected for secondary analysis.
3. Participants will be required to have normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
Participant type
Patient
Age group
Adult
Gender
Both
Target number of participants
80 participants (40 experimental, 40 control) will be recruited
Participant exclusion criteria
1. A score lower than 14 on the BDI-ii,
2. Current use of any illicit drugs (except cannabis)
3. Under 18 years of age or over 40 years of age
Recruitment start date
01/01/2011
Recruitment end date
31/12/2011
Locations
Countries of recruitment
United Kingdom
Trial participating centre
University of Bristol
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
Sponsor information
Organisation
University of Bristol (UK)
Sponsor details
Research Governance Officer
c/o Anna Brooke
Research and Enterprise Development
University of Bristol
Senate House
Tyndall Avenue
Bristol
BS8 1TH
United Kingdom
+44 (0)11 7331 7709
anna.brooke@bristol.ac.uk
Sponsor type
Not defined
Website
Funders
Funder type
University/education
Funder name
University of Bristol (UK)
Alternative name(s)
Funding Body Type
private sector organisation
Funding Body Subtype
academic
Location
United Kingdom
Results and Publications
Publication and dissemination plan
Not provided at time of registration
Intention to publish date
Participant level data
Not provided at time of registration
Basic results (scientific)
Publication list
2012 results in: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22539781