Attention Bias Modification Treatment for Children With Social Anxiety

Tel Aviv University

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Social Phobia

Treatments: Behavioral: Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT); Behavioral: Attention Control Condition

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01397032

2009340

Details and patient eligibility

About

Children with social anxiety will be randomly assigned to either Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT) designed to direct attention away from threat or a placebo control condition not designed to change attention patterns. Outcome measures will be depression and social anxiety symptoms as measured by gold standard questionnaires as well as diagnosis of social phobia disorder and symptom counts derived from structured clinical interviews with children and their parents.

We expect to see significant reduction in social anxiety symptoms in the Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT) group relative to the placebo control group.

Enrollment: 67 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 7 to 18 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• children suffering from social anxiety

Exclusion criteria

• Pharmacological or Psychological treatment

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Quadruple Blind

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67 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

Attention Bias Modification (ABM)

Experimental group

Description:

Attention training via repeated trials of a dot-probe task intended to direct attention away from threat stimuli.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT)

Placebo

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Attention training via repeated trials of a dot-probe task not intended to change threat-related attention patterns.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Attention Control Condition