Attention Bias Modification, Attention Control and Psychoeducation for Irritability in Children and Adolescents

Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre

Status: Completed

Conditions: Irritability

Treatments: Other: Psychoeducation; Other: Attention bias modification training; Other: Attention Control Training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03238118

39602514700005327

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this project is to evaluate the efficacy of an attention bias modification training if compared to an attention control and psychoeducation to reduce the symptoms of irritability among children with high levels of irritability.

Full description

Children with high levels of irritability have showed significant bias towards threatening faces. Computerized training programs have showed to be able to successfully modify these biases in children with mood and anxiety disorders. Of particular importance, a study examined the effects of attention training towards positive stimuli on attention biases and anxiety symptoms in pediatric anxiety disorders. In the attention-towards-positive condition, children searched picture arrays for a happy face amongst angry faces. In the attention-training control condition, children searched for a bird amongst flowers. This study showed significantly greater reductions in clinician-rated diagnostic severity and number of diagnoses of anxiety with that training. However, no study has investigated the role of these training in children and adolescents with high levels of irritability The present project, aims to examine the effects of the attention bias modification training and compare to attention-training control condition and psychoeducation in children with high levels of irritability.

Enrollment: 140 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 9 to 12 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• children aged 9 to 12 years with symptoms of irritability who scored above the 90% percentile for their existing symptoms on Affective Reactivity Index

Exclusion criteria

• a diagnosis of intellectual disability.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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140 participants in 3 patient groups, including a placebo group

Attention bias modification training

Experimental group

Description:

For attention-toward-positive, stimuli are colour-pictures of 16 angry and 16 happy faces (half female). Each happy face is presented 10 times, and each angry face presented 80 times across trials, balanced across the different positions in the 3 × 3 matrix. This yielded 160 training trials (two blocks of 80 trials). Children had to mouse-click on the happy face within the 3 × 3 matrix of angry faces as quickly and as accurately as possible. The matrix disappeared after the child mouse-clicked on the correct face and the next trial began.

Treatment:

Other: Psychoeducation

Other: Attention bias modification training

Attention Control Training

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

For attention-training-control, stimuli are 20 colour-pictures of individual birds and flowers used in prior visual-search tasks with children. Children mouse-clicked on the bird presented amongst flowers as quickly and accurately as possible. Other task parameters were similar to the attention-toward-positive task (160 training trials). No performance feedback is given in either condition.

Treatment:

Other: Attention Control Training

Other: Psychoeducation

Psychoeducation

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Psychoeducation is an intervention that is characterized by informing the participant of their irritability symptoms. The goal is to teach participants how to understand their symptoms, explain their treatment modalities, recognize signs that may lead to a possible crisis, and provide tips and strategies on how to deal with irritability.

Treatment:

Other: Psychoeducation