Effects of emotion perception training on mood in undergraduate students

ISRCTN	ISRCTN02532638
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN02532638
Protocol serial number	1434
Sponsor	University of Bristol (UK)
Funder	University of Bristol (UK)

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

School of Experimental Psychology
University of Bristol
12a Priory Road
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom

Phone	+44 (0)11 7954 6841
Email	marcus.munafo@bristol.ac.uk

Study information

Primary study design	Interventional
Study design	Double-blind, placebo-controlled study
Secondary study design	Randomised controlled trial
Study type	Participant 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(s)	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.
Key secondary outcome measure(s)	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.
Completion date	31/12/2011

Eligibility

Participant type(s)	Patient
Age group	Adult
Sex	All
Target sample size at registration	80
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

United Kingdom
England

Study participating centre

University of Bristol

Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom

Results and Publications

Individual participant data (IPD) Intention to share	No
IPD sharing plan summary	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
Participant information sheet	Participant information sheet	11/11/2025	11/11/2025	No	Yes