Video Game Play to Alleviate Adolescent Anxiety
- Conditions
- AnxietyAnxiety Disorders and Symptoms
- Interventions
- Behavioral: Bejelewed 3Behavioral: Eco-Rescue
- Registration Number
- NCT05923944
- Lead Sponsor
- School of Health Sciences Geneva
- Brief Summary
Adolescence is a critical period for the onset and maintenance of anxiety disorders, which raises the importance of intervening early; one possibility of doing so is via digital interventions. At least two lines of research have been explored in the past years in this area. First, studies have tested the anxiolytic effects of casual video games, hypothesizing that, through the induction of flow, these games can effectively distract individuals from anxiety-related thoughts and feelings. Second, the bidirectional link between poor attentional control and higher anxiety has led to the design of novel interventions aiming to improve attentional control such as working memory training studies. Importantly, action video games, classified as a distinct gaming genre, have been shown to enhance attentional control. In this study, we aim to compare the effects of action video game play and casual game play to a no-training group, assessing their potential to alleviate anxiety when delivered entirely online. The goal of this three- arms randomized controlled trial is to evaluate the feasibility of a 6-week video game training intervention to reduce adolescent anxiety-related symptoms. We will also examine the efficacy of the proposed treatment when entirely deployed at adolescents' home.
- Detailed Description
Not available
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- RECRUITING
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 150
- Adolescents aged 11-15 years
- High-anxious score from the 41 items SCARED-Parent version (i.e. total score equal or above 17)
- Access to a computer (at least Windows 7 or Mac OSX) at home and a reliable internet connection
- DSM diagnoses of Bipolar, Psychosis, Autism Spectrum Disorder, present or past.
- Neurological injury (i.e. head injury)
- Currently enrolled in another cognitive training intervention
Study & Design
- Study Type
- INTERVENTIONAL
- Study Design
- PARALLEL
- Arm && Interventions
Group Intervention Description Bejeweled 3 - Casual gaming - intervention Bejelewed 3 The Bejeweled 3 training intervention will be delivered through a dedicated video game installed on each participant's personal computer through the Steam platform, following a recommended training regimen of 30 minutes per day, 4 days per week for 6 weeks, for an expected total training duration of 12 hours. Eco-Rescue - Attentional Control - intervention Eco-Rescue The Eco-Rescue training intervention will be delivered through a dedicated video game installed on each participant's personal computer through the Steam platform, following a recommended training regimen of 30 minutes per day, 4 days per week for 6 weeks, for an expected total training duration of 12 hours.
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Anxiety assessed through the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders Child Version (SCARED-C; Birmaher et al. 1999) Change from baseline (T1) at 1 week after training completion (T2), and at 4 months after training completion (T3) The SCARED-C is a 41 items self-report anxiety questionnaire with subscales measuring General Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia Disorder, Panic Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder and School Avoidance. Participants are asked to rate each statement, referring to the past four weeks, on a scale ranging from 0 (Not True or Hardly Ever True) to 2 (Very True or Often True). A score of 25 or higher may indicate the presence of an Anxiety Disorder. Analysis of primary outcome will be based on this total score.
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Attentional Control assessed through the Multiple Objects Tracking Task (MOT; Yung et al., 2015) Change from baseline (T1) at 1 week after training completion (T2), and at 4 months after training completion (T3) The MOT is a computerized task in which participants are presented 16 yellow smileys moving freely within a circular area. During the first two seconds of each trial, a subset of these items is flagged as targets by being blue. Participants are instructed to track these blue smileys even though they turn back to yellow and become indistinguishable from the other items. After a few seconds, the items stop moving, one item is highlighted, and participants respond whether this item was initially flagged blue or not. MOT performance is measured as the percentage of correct responses (i.e. accuracy) in trials with 3, 4, 5 and 6 targets independently and combined overall. Higher accuracy score indicates better task performance. This task requires not only selecting targets amongst distractors but also dividing one's attention among these moving targets. Furthermore, it requires sustaining attention for a few seconds, necessitating both sustained attention and visuo-spatial working memory.
Affective Control assessed through the Affective Backward Digit Span Task (ABDS; modified version of Schweizer et al. 2019) Change from baseline (T1) at 1 week after training completion (T2), and at 4 months after training completion (T3) The ABDS is a computer-based task where participants are presented with digits (for 1500 ms) one after the other, and asked to recall them in reverse order. These are presented on a background of either neutral or affective images, in two different blocks, to manipulate valence. The images are sourced from the Geneva Affective Picture Database. In each trial, participants are presented with a series of single digits \[0-9\]. The length of the series to recall is increased or decreased by one digit depending on previous trial performance according to a 1-up-1-down staircase. No feedback is provided. After two reversals the block stops. Span is estimated for each block as the maximum correct length recalled. The span difference between the neutral versus affective blocks is an index of the individual ability to implement control in the face of affective distraction
Attentional Control assessed through the Useful Field of View Task (UFOV; Yung et al., 2015) Change from baseline (T1) at 1 week after training completion (T2), and at 4 months after training completion (T3) The UFOV is a computerized divided attention task where participants have to identify whether a briefly flashed smiley presented at the center of the screen has short or long hair and detect on which of the eight cardinal directions was a peripheral target stimulus presented, while ignoring other distractors. The presentation time is made shorter (more difficult) or longer (less difficult) according to a 3-down-1-up staircase. The task stops after 8 reversals or 72 trials, whichever happens first. Performance is measured by the mean presentation time of the last 5 trials (expressed in milliseconds). The task measures the efficiency of divided visual attention in the presence of visual distractors.
Attentional Control assessed through an adaptation of the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA) as implemented in the ACE-X battery (Mars-UFO and Venus-UFO; https://neuroscape.ucsf.edu/researchers-ace/) Change from baseline (T1) at 1 week after training completion (T2), and at 4 months after training completion (T3) The TOVA is a computerized task where participants press a response key when presented with a visual stimulus in the upper part of the screen (go trials) and refrain from responding if flashed in the lower part of the screen (no-go trials). A first block evaluates sustained attention and a second impulsivity. In the sustained attention, go trials represent 25% of the trials; in the impulsivity block, go trials represent 75% of the trials.
Trial Locations
- Locations (2)
University of Haifa
🇮🇱Haifa, Israel
University of Geneva
🇨ðŸ‡Geneva, Switzerland