Shaping Tolerance for Delayed Rewards

Conditions

• Impulsivity

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

ALL

Age

3 Years - 6 Years

Healthy Volunteers

Not accepted

Interventions

• Shaping Delay Tolerance — BEHAVIORAL
  Participants will be introduced to an adaptive tablet-based application that asks the child to choose between two options: 1) a shorter duration of game play that begins immediately, or 2) a longer duration of game play that begins after a delay. Depending on the child's choices, the application alters the pre-reward delay with the intent of training the child to tolerate longer delays for larger rewards (i.e., more game play). Children may participate in up to 25 approximately 30-minute training sessions over 3-6 weeks.

Study Details

Deficits in self-control are of major public health relevance as they contribute to several negative outcomes for both individuals and society. For children, developing self-control is a critically important step toward success in academic settings and social relationships, yet there are few non-pharmacological approaches that have been successful in increasing self-control. We found in our earlier studies that self-control can be increased in preschool-aged children with high impulsivity by using games in which they practice gradually increasing wait-time for larger, more delayed rewards. We are performing this current study to test if this training to increase self-control can be increased using mobile app technology, with computerized game time being used as a reward.

Key Dates

Start date

Sep 12, 2017

Status verified

Jun 2026

Primary completion

Aug 31, 2026

Completion

Aug 31, 2026

Study Design

Enrollment

50 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Arms

• Experimental: Treatment
  Participants in the Experimental arm will begin the Shaping Delay Tolerance behavioral intervention immediately after baseline, and this training will last for about 6 weeks.
• Active Comparator: Wait-list Control
  After baseline, participants in the Wait-list Control arm will wait for about 6-weeks before entering the pre-treatment phase, which is a repeat of effortful control assessments and behavior questionnaires, and then they will begin training for with the Shaping Delay Tolerance behavioral intervention.

Primary Outcome Measure

Indifference point [ Time Frame: Up to 6 weeks ]

Central Contacts

• Samantha Blair, PhD
  916-703-0325
  [email protected]
• Shannon Hoffman, DPT
  916-703-0258
  [email protected]

Locations (1)

Find similar trials in Sacramento, CA

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