Emotion Recognition Training in Antisocial Violent Offenders With Psychopathic Traits

Not Applicable

• Conditions: Emotional Problem; Psychopathy; Violent Aggressive Behavior
• Interventions: Behavioral: GAZE Training; Behavioral: SEE Training

• Registration Number: NCT03382808
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital Tuebingen

Brief Summary

Impaired recognition of affective facial expressions has been conclusively linked to antisocial and psychopathy. However, little is known about the modifiability of this deficit. This study aims to investigate whether and under which circumstances the proposed perceptual insensitivity can be addressed with a brief implicit training approach.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2017-04-01
• Status Verified: 2017-12
• Study First Submitted: 2017-12-12
• Study First Submitted QC: 2017-12-18
• Last Update Submitted: 2017-12-18
• Study First Posted: 2017-12-26
• Last Update Posted: 2017-12-26
• Primary Completion: 2019-03-01
• Study Completion: 2019-12-31

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: Male
• Target Recruitment: 80

Inclusion Criteria

• Confirmed ASPD diagnosis
• PCL-Score available
• arrested for committing violent crimes

Exclusion Criteria

• Insufficient knowledge of the German language
• Diagnosed with schizophrenia
• Substance abuse
• Neurological disease (e.g. epilepsy)
• Mental retardation

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
GAZE Training	GAZE Training	The GAZE training sequence comprises four weekly sessions using a modified dote-probe paradigm (averted vs. directed gaze).
SEE Training	SEE Training	The training sequence comprises four weekly sessions using a modified dote-probe paradigm (fearful vs. neutral expression).

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Animated morph task	change from pre-treatment to post-treatment after 8 weeks	Morphed images are presented, beginning with the neutral face that progresses into one of the six affective expressions. This procedure creates the impression of an animated clip depicting the development of facial emotive expressions. Participants are instructed to press a button as soon as they are able to identify the emerging expression.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Unconscious processing of affective facial expressions during interocular suppression in a breaking Continuous flash suppression paradigm	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)	Change in processing of unaware/unconsciously perceived emotional stimuli as assessed by number of faces correctly identified
Eye-Tracking	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)	Change in recognition and visual processing of emotional faces as indicated by raw scores and group means for dwell time, total dwell time, and time to first AOI (mouth/eye region) hit
Ambivalence Task	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)	Change in interpretation of ambiguous emotional faces as indicated by number of hostile judgments
Emotional search paradigm	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)	Assessment of implicit perceptual biases for and explicit categorization of facial expression in an emotional search paradigm (change pre- to post-intervention)
Affective prosody	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)	Change in recognition of non-verbal emotional aspects of language as assessed by number of correct classifications
Multifaceted empathy test	pre-treatment, after 8 weeks (post-treatment)	Assessment of cognitive and emotional empathy (change pre- to post-intervention)

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Tübingen; 🇩🇪 Tübingen, Baden Würrtemberg, Germany