NCT03382808

Emotion Recognition Training in Antisocial Violent Offenders With Psychopathic Traits

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 80 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University Hospital Tuebingen · Academic / Other
• Sex: Male
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

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.

Conditions

• Psychopathy
• Violent Aggressive Behavior
• Emotional Problem

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
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.
BEHAVIORAL	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.

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-04-01
• Primary completion: 2019-03-01
• Completion: 2019-12-31
• First posted: 2017-12-26
• Last updated: 2017-12-26

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Germany