Multi-session, Personalized Cognitive Bias Modification for Thought-Action-Fusion

Part of paid clinical trials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Sponsor
Han Joo Lee
Study ID
NCT06731426
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

  • OCD

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
18 Years - N/A
Healthy Volunteers
Not accepted

Interventions

  • CBM-TAF — BEHAVIORAL
    CBM-TAF aims to modify TAF by training participants to adopt an interpretation style that is inconsistent with TAF (i.e., having unwanted thoughts is not morally equivalent to acting upon them and/or having unwanted thoughts does not increase the likelihood of feared events happening in real life). To personalize the training, CBM-TAF is designed to address 4 subtypes of OCD (as defined by Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale; Abramowitz et al., 2010), each of which targets either TAF-moral or TAF-likelihood. Participants will indicate two OCD subtypes that are most relevant to their experiences and only complete scenarios that correspond to their chosen subtypes. For each scenario, participants are instructed to enter a missing letter in a fragmented word and resolve its emotional ambiguity. After then, participants will answer a True/False question related to the given scenario to verify their comprehension and consolidate their acquisition of healthier interpretation style.
  • CBM-SMP — BEHAVIORAL
    CBM-SMP is a comparable intervention to CBM-TAF (Siwiec et al., 2023), which aims to provide general education about stress and stress management techniques. It is identical to CBM-TAF in terms of its administration, except for the content of scenarios included in training sessions. For each scenario, participants are instructed to enter a missing letter in a fragmented word. After then, participants will answer a True/False question related to the given scenario in order to verify their comprehension.

Study Details

Thought-Action-Fusion (TAF) is a cognitive bias that posits (1) having unwanted thoughts is morally equivalent to acting upon the thoughts (TAF-Moral; e.g., "Thinking about harming a child is as immoral as actually harming a child") and (2) having unwanted thoughts will increase the likelihood of the thoughts happening in real life (TAF-Likelihood; e.g., "My mother will get into a car accident, because I thought about it"). Given its central role in the development and maintenance of OCD, TAF has emerged as a potential treatment target for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Previous research has demonstrated that TAF is indeed a malleable construct. This study aims to examine the effects of a multi-session, personalized cognitive bias modification (CBM) for thought-action-fusion (TAF) on improving obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms in a college sample.

Key Dates

Start date
Apr 18, 2024
Status verified
Dec 2024
Primary completion
May 31, 2026
Completion
May 31, 2026

Study Design

Enrollment
84 participants (estimated)
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT

Arms

  • Experimental: Cognitive Bias Modification for Thought-Action-Fusion (CBM-TAF)
    CBM-TAF will employ an ambiguous sentence-completion task, where participants have to fill in a missing letter in a fragmented word and resolve emotional ambiguity of a given scenario. At the beginning of each training session, participants will watch a brief animated video about TAF, OCD, and modifying TAF. Each training session will consist of 40 scenarios, which will take about 20 minutes to complete. There will be a total of 6 sessions (2x/week for 3 weeks).
  • Active Comparator: Cognitive Bias Modification for Stress Management Psychoeducation (CBM-SMP)
    Similar to CBM-TAF, CBM-SMP will employ an ambiguous sentence-completion task, where participants have to fill in a missing letter in a fragmented word. However, the content of scenarios in CBM-SMP will focus on general stress management techniques. At the beginning of each training session, participants will watch a brief animated video about OCD and stress management techniques. Each training session will consist of 40 scenarios, which will take about 20 minutes to complete. There will be a total of 6 sessions (2x/week for 3 weeks).
  • No Intervention: Waitlist (WL)
    Participants in WL group will only complete weekly assessment measures without engaging in any training sessions.

Primary Outcome Measure

Thought-Action-Fusion Scale (TAFS) at Pre-, Post-, and 1MFU [ Time Frame: Pre-training (before 1st training session), Post-training (at the end of 6th training session, 3 weeks after the 1st training session on average), 1-Month Follow-Up (1 month after the 6th training session) ]

Central Contacts

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
UWM Anxiety Disorders LaboratoryMilwaukeeWisconsin53211
Hanjoo Lee, PhD
Minjee Kook, BA
Hanjoo Lee, Ph.D.

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