ClinicalTrials.gg
CompletedNCT03437317PTLUpdated Feb 19, 2018

Emotional Perceptual Training as a Treatment for Social Anxiety: Behavioral and Neural Evidence.

An interventional study of Perceptual Retraining and Gender Discrimination in Anxiety Disorders and Symptoms and Social Anxiety Disorder, sponsored by Florida State University. Completed. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 35 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2018-02-19.

Primary conditionPhobia, SocialRegistry: Anxiety DisordersReclassifiedWhy we changed it
Registry
Anxiety Disorders — the first condition term the registry derived for this study.
ClinicalTrials.gg
Phobia, Social
Why
  1. The registry often attaches Anxiety Disorders to studies about something else, and this study's title and listed conditions do not name it.
  2. The study's listed conditions name Phobia, Social, a narrower term within Anxiety Disorders.
Confidence
High: the new condition is named in the study's own listed conditions. Of 351 hand-checked studies reclassified this way, 68% were exactly right and 84% in the right disease family; the registry's first term was right for 5% (measured 2026-10-21). How we classify →
Wrong?
Tell us the study's main condition →

Sponsored by Florida State University · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment

From the registry’s dates

  • Registered 3 years 3 months after the study started (first participant enrolled Nov 2014, registered Feb 2018).
Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
154
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
18 Years to 35 Years
Sex
All
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Study summary

The Perceptual Training Study is a series of studies performed with the purpose of identifying a potential avenue for treatment of mood disorders, particularly anxiety-based mood disorders. The underlying theme is that neural representations may be threat-oriented, and may also be generalized to non-threatening cues by means of similarity to threatening representations. These may result in anxiety symptoms from innocuous cues. The idea behind the perceptual training is to create a divorce between the threat representations and cues which should be considered non-threatening, enhancing perceptual acuity and potentially reducing anxiety symptoms.

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Conditions studied

  • Anxiety Disorders and Symptoms
  • Social Anxiety Disorder

Browse trials for

Keywords

  • Social Anxiety
  • Threat processing
  • Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
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In context

Phobia, Social Reclassified

368 studies on the registry are indexed under Phobia, Social; 59 are open to participants now.

This study's enrollment of 154 is above the median of 76 across 339 interventional studies indexed under Phobia, Social.

Browse Phobia, Social studies →

Lead sponsor

Florida State University is the lead sponsor of 249 studies on the registry; 47 are open to participants now.

Of its 16 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 9 (56%) have results posted.

Compared within Phobia, Social, this study's primary condition as ClinicalTrials.gg classifies it; the registry's first condition term is Anxiety Disorders. The counts are of registry records indexed under each term, refreshed daily. How we classify →

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Who can participate

Ages eligible
18 Years to 35 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
Yes

Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.

Inclusion criteria

  • Right-handed
  • Normal or corrected-to-normal vision

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • History of a diagnosed neurological or - IV Axis I disorder
  • Currently taking prescribed psychoactive drugs, including anti-depressants or anxiolytics.
  • Having electrically, magnetically, or mechanically activated implants (e.g. cardiac pacemakers), due to incompatibility with MRI and MEG systems.
  • Pregnancy or suspected pregnancy
Terms in these criteria, in plain language(1)

Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.

DSM diagnostic criteria

The American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental health diagnoses. DSM-5 (2013, revised as DSM-5-TR in 2022) replaced DSM-IV, and some studies still name the older edition. “Meets DSM criteria for …” means diagnosed by that edition’s diagnostic criteria, usually by a clinician in an interview.

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Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Treatment
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
Single (Participant)
Enrollment
154 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    Active - MEG

    Participants completed 1 session of 8 Perceptual Retraining blocks following an instructional presentation.

    Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

  • Sham comparator
    Control - MEG

    Participants completed 1 session of 8 blocks of Gender Discrimination Task.

    Behavioral: Gender Discrimination

  • Experimental
    Active - 3 Behavior/EEG

    Participants completed 3 sessions of Perceptual Retraining following an instructional presentation. The first session included 6 blocks of perceptual training, and the second session included 12 blocks of perceptual training. No perceptual training was performed in session 3. Sessions were spaced approximately 7 days apart, with a minimum of 3 days and a maximum of 14 days apart.

    Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

  • Experimental
    Active - 1 Behavior/MEG

    Participants completed 1 session of 6 Perceptual Retraining blocks following an instructional presentation.

    Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

  • Sham comparator
    Control - 3 Behavior/MEG

    Participants completed 3 sessions of a Gender Discrimination Task. The first session included 6 blocks of gender discrimination task, and the second session included 12 blocks of the gender discrimination task. No gender discrimination task was performed in session 3. Sessions were spaced approximately 7 days apart, with a minimum of 3 days and a maximum of 14 days apart.

    Behavioral: Gender Discrimination

Interventions

  • BehavioralPerceptual Retraining

    Participants viewed faces varying in their expression of anger and were asked to identify if the face was angry or neutral via button press. Participants were provided with feedback if their categorization of the face as neutral or angry was correct. Each participant was assigned 4 levels of angry faces based on their decision point of anger detection in faces. Faces were selected based on the closest existing anger morph to the category boundary; for example, a decision point of 40% anger was closest to the 38% anger face, and so the faces used would have been 17%, 31%, 45%, and 59% anger. For this example, responses of "neutral" to the 31% angry face would be marked as correct, whereas a similar response to the 45% angry face would be incorrect, as it was above their decision point.

  • BehavioralGender Discrimination

    Participants viewed faces varying in their expression of anger and were asked to identify if the face was male or female via button press.

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What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Behavioral Evidence for Categorical Perception Changes

    Participants will be asked to respond if they detected anger in faces varying in their levels of anger expression. This task is used to determine a perceptual bias for threat/anger in faces that is related to increases in social anxiety symptoms, and assess for improvements in the categorization of angry vs. neutral faces. that align with modulations of neural responses (MEG and EEG evidence) indexing perceptual processing of the faces following perceptual retraining.

    Time frame: Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)

  2. Neural Evidence for Categorical Perception Changes

    Neural activity will be recorded using EEG and MEG to measure neural processes underpinning categorical perception of anger in faces. Changes in this neural perceptual index will be assessed following perceptual retraining to provide a neural mechanism underpinning behavioral improvements in perceptual categorization and subsequent reductions in anxiety.

    Time frame: Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)

Secondary outcomes

  1. Social Anxiety Symptoms - Social Phobia Scale

    Change in social anxiety symptomatology through perceptual retraining

    Time frame: Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)

  2. Social Anxiety Symptoms - Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale

    Change in social anxiety symptomatology through perceptual retraining

    Time frame: Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)

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Study locations

No study locations are listed for this record.

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References and documents

Individual participant data

Plan to share: Undecided

No publications or documents are linked to this record.

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Timeline

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
ElapsedEstimatedEstimated, not yet reachedSimilar studies: half by the dot; the band is the middle halfHalf of similar studies reached it by the dot; the band is the middle half, from a quarter to three quarters

Ran from Nov 2014 to primary completion in Dec 2016, 25 months.

Of 142 non-industry interventional studies with no phase under Phobia, Social, half reached primary completion within 28 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 15 and three quarters within 44. This study's 25 months is below that.

Counting every sponsor, half of 148 studies reached it within 28 months; a quarter within 14 and three quarters within 43.

How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.

Registered
Feb 6, 2018
First posted
Feb 19, 2018
StartActual
Nov 1, 2014
Primary completionActual
Dec 15, 2016
CompletionActual
Dec 15, 2016
Last update
Feb 19, 2018
What these dates mean
Start.
When the first participant enrolled; while estimated, when the study expects to open to recruitment.
Primary completion.
When the last participant was examined or treated to collect data for the study's main question, its primary outcome. A study that stopped early gives the date its data collection stopped.
Completion.
When the last participant's last visit took place, for every outcome, secondary ones and side effects included: the end of the study. Often later than primary completion, sometimes the same day.
Actual and Est.
Actual means the registry says the date has happened. Est. (estimated) is a date the sponsor plans or expects. It can still move, and the sponsor is expected to change it to actual once it has passed.
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Feb 19, 2018, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT03437317
Responsible party
Wen Li (Dr. Wen Li, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Florida State University) — Principal investigator
First posted
Feb 19, 2018
Start date
Nov 1, 2014
Primary completion
Dec 15, 2016
Completion
Dec 15, 2016
Last update
Feb 19, 2018

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

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This study is completed, as verified in Feb 2018. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.

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