NCT06409247

iExposure Intervention for Social Anxiety

Testing the Role of Attentional and Audio Vocal Mechanisms in a New Internet- Based Intervention for Social Anxiety: iExposure

• Status: Active Not Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 390 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Palo Alto University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Social anxiety (SA) is a highly prevalent mental health concern, thought to disproportionately affect youth with recent international estimates of more than 30% of individuals reporting clinically elevated symptoms. Despite the prevalence of SA, as few as one in five individuals receive care, due to limited access to evidence-based treatments. Additionally there has been a notable increase in social anxiety since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This proposal will use iExposure to develop a personalized mechanism-focused approach to optimizing treatment response for individuals with social anxiety by testing standard iExposure against two augmentations that incorporate distinct attention mechanisms (attention guidance and attention control).

Conditions

• Social Anxiety

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	iExposure	There will be 4 treatment sessions, covering the iExposure intervention. The intervention and assessment process is entirely self-guided. Each session will last approximately 60 minutes. Participants will complete 10 mock-interaction trials for each session.
BEHAVIORAL	iExposure plus attention guidance	The attention guidance condition consists of two unique components in addition to the standard iExposure intervention: (1) the intervention rationale will include information about the importance of visually attending to the faces of the audience; (2) participants will be given a target audience member to focus their gaze on during each impromptu response. They will be told that they should look at and focus on the target audience member for the whole response. In each progressive session the number of trials where the participant is directed to focus on an uninterested audience member will increase.
BEHAVIORAL	iExposure plus attention control	The attention control condition consists of two unique components in addition to the standard iExposure intervention (1) the intervention rationale will include information about the importance of developing attention control; (2) participants will be given a central region of the screen (non-audience member) to focus on. They will be told that they should look at and focus on the central region for the whole response.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-07-01
• Primary completion: 2026-03-30
• Completion: 2026-03-30
• First posted: 2024-05-10
• Last updated: 2026-03-09

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States