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| Name | Class |
|---|---|
| The University of Hong Kong | OTHER |
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This study aims to test the efficacy of a 6-session conditioning paradigm by investigating the conditioning-induced change in the socio-affective processing, loneliness, depressive symptoms, and neural correlates of lonely adults.
Potential participants will first be invited to complete a loneliness questionnaire online. Lonely adults will then be invited to undergo further screening. At baseline prior to the intervention training sessions, participants will first complete tests and questionnaires on loneliness, mood and depressive symptoms in addition to other socio-affective measures, and they will also be invited to receive resting-state functional MRI scanning in a 3T MRI scanner. Participants will then be allocated to one of the two intervention arms (the evaluative conditioning, and the control) in a randomized fashion with approximately half in each group. They will then complete the pre-conditioning phase of the allocated intervention arm, and their ratings on the stimuli presented during this phase will be assessed. In the conditioning phase, they will be invited to attend 6 sessions. After completing the conditioning phase, participants will be invited to complete the post- conditioning phase, providing ratings on the stimuli like the pre-conditioning phase. Immediately after, and also 3 months after, participants will be invited to complete again tests and questionnaires on loneliness, mood and depressive symptoms in addition to other socio-affective measures, and they will also be invited to receive resting-state functional MRI scanning in a 3T MRI scanner.
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| Label | Type | Description | Intervention Names |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evaluative conditioning group with positive stimuli | Experimental | Participants will be exposed to social stimuli paired with positive stimuli across multiple sessions. |
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| Control group with neutral stimuli | Active Comparator | Participants will be exposed to social stimuli paired with neutral stimuli across multiple sessions. |
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| Name | Type | Description | Arm Group Labels | Other Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evaluative Conditioning with positive stimuli | Behavioral | In the pre-conditioning phase, participants will be exposed to pictures that vary in their emotional (negative, positive) and social (non-social, social) content. For each picture, they are required to indicate their immediate perceived valence (between negative to positive), degree of social motivation (between none to high) on Likert-scales. In the conditioning phase, emotional social pictures will be selected and paired with non-social positive stimuli for trials in random order, for 6 sessions across 3 weeks. In the post-conditioning phase, participants will be asked to evaluate the valence of the stimuli again similar to that in pre-conditioning phase. |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Self-reported loneliness | Loneliness is assessed based on the UCLA loneliness scale (Version 3), a 20-item 4-point Likert scale (score range 20 - 80) in which higher scores indicate greater degrees of loneliness. | Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention |
| Implicit loneliness | Implicit loneliness will be measured by Implicit Association Test about the relative strength of association between our participants' target concept 'Self' and attribute 'Lonely'. | Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Valence of social stimuli | For each stimuli, they are required to indicate their immediate perceived valence (between negative to positive) of the scenes on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly positive, 7 = strongly negative). | Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention |
| Social motivation towards social stimuli |
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Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
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| Name | Role | Phone | Extension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nichol ML Wong, PhD | Contact | 852-29487431 | nmlwong@eduhk.hk |
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Nichol ML Wong, PhD | Education University of Hong Kong | Principal Investigator |
| Facility | Status | City | State | ZIP | Country | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The University of Hong Kong | Recruiting | Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| PubMed Identifier | Type | Citation | Retractions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40866945 | Derived | Wong NML, Lee TMC. Evaluating the effects of a conditioning training paradigm on loneliness, socio-affective processing, and brain connectivity: a study protocol of a two-arm randomised controlled trial. BMC Psychol. 2025 Aug 27;13(1):975. doi: 10.1186/s40359-025-03342-3. |
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| Conditioning with neutral stimuli | Behavioral | In the pre-conditioning phase, participants will be exposed to pictures that vary in their emotional (negative, positive) and social (non-social, social) content. For each picture, they are required to indicate their immediate perceived valence (between negative to positive), degree of social motivation (between none to high) on Likert-scales. In the conditioning phase, emotional social pictures will be selected and paired with with neutral non-social stimuli for trials in random order, for 6 sessions across 3 weeks. In the post-conditioning phase, participants will be asked to evaluate the valence of the stimuli again similar to that in pre-conditioning phase. |
|
For each stimuli, they are required to indicate their immediate perceived degree of social motivation (between none to high) of the scenes on a 7-point Likert scales (1 = no, 7 = very high). |
| Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention |
| Loneliness-related activation patterns and connectivity in neural networks | Neural connectivity in Default Mode Network, Ventral Attention Network, Frontoparietal Network are assessed by fMRI | Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention |
| Depressive symptoms | Depressive symptoms are assessed based on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, a 14-item scale assessing severity of depressive and anxiety symptom (score range 0 - 21 for both subscale), with higher scores indicating higher severity | Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention |
| Daily loneliness | Daily loneliness is assessed based on a 5-minute self-report on a Likert scale | Through study completion, on average of 4 months |