Gaze Contingent Feedback in Social Anxiety Disorder

Tel Aviv University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Phobia, Social

Treatments: Behavioral: attention modification; Other: Placebo

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02590770

TAUSAD

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to determine whether giving gaze-contingent feedback is an effective attention modification procedure, helping in the treatment of social anxiety disorder (SAD)

Full description

The study examines giving social anxious participants gaze-contingent feedback as a novel attention training procedure. Half of the participants will receive contingent feedback while the other half would receive non-contingent "placebo" feedback.

Enrollment: 40 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 60 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• A signed consent form
• Men and women between the ages of 18 and 60.
• Meeting a current diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder (SP) according to the DSM-IV
• A minimum of a 1-year duration of SP
• SP as the primary diagnosis: In cases of co-morbidity, SP will be deemed as the most distressing and clinically significant condition among the co-morbid disorders
• Stable pharmaco-therapy: Participants receiving a pharmacological treatment who are taking a stable medication for at least 3 months before the beginning of the procedure.

Exclusion criteria

• Psychotic episode in the past or the present time.
• Co-morbidity with any neurological disorder (i.e., epilepsy, brain injury).
• Another psychotherapeutic treatment during the study.
• Usage of neuroleptic medication.
• Change in medication status during the study.
• Substantial usage of drugs or alcohol in the present time.
• Poor judgment capacity (i.e., children under 18 and special populations).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Quadruple Blind

---

40 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

gaze-contingent

Active Comparator group

Description:

attention modification: participants will receive gaze-contingent feedback according to their viewing patterns

Treatment:

Behavioral: attention modification

non-gaze contingent

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Placebo: participants will receive non-gaze-contingent feedback according to their viewing patterns

Treatment:

Other: Placebo