Effects of emotion perception training on mood in undergraduate students
| ISRCTN | ISRCTN02532638 |
|---|---|
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN02532638 |
| Secondary identifying numbers | 1434 |
- Submission date
- 02/03/2011
- Registration date
- 23/03/2011
- Last edited
- 12/12/2014
- Recruitment status
- No longer recruiting
- Overall study status
- Completed
- Condition category
- Mental and Behavioural Disorders
Prospectively registered
Protocol
Statistical analysis plan
Results
Individual participant data
Plain English summary of protocol
Not provided at time of registration
Contact information
Prof Marcus Munafo
Scientific
Scientific
School of Experimental Psychology
University of Bristol
12a Priory Road
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)11 7954 6841 |
|---|---|
| marcus.munafo@bristol.ac.uk |
Study information
| Study design | Double-blind, placebo-controlled study |
|---|---|
| Primary study design | Interventional |
| Secondary study design | Randomised controlled trial |
| Study setting(s) | Other |
| Study type | Treatment |
| Participant information sheet | Not available in web format, please use the conatct details below to request a patient information sheet |
| Scientific title | Effects of emotion perception training on mood in undergraduate students: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study |
| Study objectives | 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(s) | University of Bristol Faculty of Science Research Ethics Committee approved on 28/10/10 (ref: 211010468) |
| Health condition(s) or problem(s) studied | 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 |
| 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 study start date | 01/01/2011 |
| Completion date | 31/12/2011 |
Eligibility
| Participant type(s) | Patient |
|---|---|
| Age group | Adult |
| Sex | Both |
| Target number of participants | 80 participants (40 experimental, 40 control) will be recruited |
| Key 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. |
| Key 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 |
| Date of first enrolment | 01/01/2011 |
| Date of final enrolment | 31/12/2011 |
Locations
Countries of recruitment
- England
- United Kingdom
Study participating centre
University of Bristol
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
Sponsor information
University of Bristol (UK)
Not defined
Not defined
Research Governance Officer
c/o Anna Brooke
Research and Enterprise Development
University of Bristol
Senate House
Tyndall Avenue
Bristol
BS8 1TH
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)11 7331 7709 |
|---|---|
| anna.brooke@bristol.ac.uk | |
"ROR" |
https://ror.org/0524sp257 |
Funders
Funder type
University/education
University of Bristol (UK)
Government organisation / Universities (academic only)
Government organisation / Universities (academic only)
- Alternative name(s)
- Universitas Bristolliensis, bristoluniversity, bristoluni
- Location
- United Kingdom
Results and Publications
| Intention to publish date | |
|---|---|
| Individual participant data (IPD) Intention to share | No |
| IPD sharing plan summary | Not provided at time of registration |
| Publication and dissemination plan | Not provided at time of registration |
| IPD sharing plan |
Study outputs
| Output type | Details | Date created | Date added | Peer reviewed? | Patient-facing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Results article | results | 01/07/2012 | Yes | No |
