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CompletedNCT03957850KONNIUpdated Aug 23, 2022

Cognitive Reappraisal in Adolescents With Major Depression

An interventional study of Cognitive Reappraisal Training and Control Training in Major Depressive Disorder, sponsored by Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich. Completed at 1 site in Germany. Open to participants aged 12 Years to 18 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2022-08-23.

Sponsored by Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment

Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
71
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
12 Years to 18 Years
Sex
All
01

Study summary

Major depression (MD) is common during adolescence and associated with significant morbidity and mortality. One important factor for the development and maintenance of adolescent MD are disturbances in emotion regulation, including deficits in cognitive reappraisal (CR). CR is a particularly effective emotion regulation strategy that aims at reinterpreting emotional events to modify affective responses. Adolescents with MD apply this strategy less often than their healthy peers and show disturbances in brain activation patterns underlying CR.

In this study, MD adolescents will be randomly assigned to a group that receives a task-based training in CR or to a control training group. It will be examined whether the task-based CR training is superior to the control training with regard to improvements in negative affect, perceived stress in daily life and depressive symptoms. Moreover, during the four training sessions, the event-related potential "Late Positive Potential" (LPP) will be recorded to assess neurophysiological indices of CR processes and gaze fixations on emotional areas within negative pictures and affective responses to pictures will be collected to identify mechanisms underlying training effects.This study will provide first evidence for the efficacy of a short-time training that has previously shown to be effective in healthy individuals. Moreover, the study will identify neurobiological mechanisms that predict training effects. The results of this investigation will lay the ground for a clinical trial to investigate whether a CR training added to an established intervention improves treatment effects for adolescent MD.

02

Conditions studied

  • Major Depressive Disorder

Keywords

  • Emotion Regulation Training
  • LPP
  • Adolescence
  • Major Depression
  • Eye-tracking
  • Cognitive Reappraisal
  • Event-related Potentials
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In context

Depression

8,057 studies on the registry are indexed under Depression; 1,641 are open to participants now.

This study's enrollment of 71 is below the median of 84 across 6,720 interventional studies indexed under Depression.

Browse Depression studies →

Lead sponsor

Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich is the lead sponsor of 218 studies on the registry; 29 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
12 Years to 18 Years
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

  • Female and male participants
  • age range: 12-18 years
  • current diagnosis of MD (ICD-10 diagnoses F32.0; F32.1; F32.2, F33.0, F33.1, F.33.2)
  • intelligence quotient (IQ) of ≥ 80

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • neurological disorders
  • schizophrenic disorder
  • pervasive developmental disorder
  • bipolar disorder
  • borderline personality disorder
  • substance dependence disorder
  • gender dysphoria.

Participants comorbid with psychiatric comorbidities other than those listed above are included if MD is the primary diagnosis.

05

Study design

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

Study arms

  • Experimental
    Cognitive Reappraisal Training Group

    Cognitive Reappraisal Training group will perform 4 training sessions in Cognitive Reappraisal during which, behavioral responses, event-related potentials (ERPs) and eye-tracking data are collected.

    Behavioral: Cognitive Reappraisal Training

  • Active comparator
    Control Training Group

    Control Training Group will perform 4 control sessions without Cognitive Reappraisal Training during which behavioral responses, ERP and eye-tracking data are collected.

    Behavioral: Control Training

Interventions

  • BehavioralCognitive Reappraisal Training

    The training procedure is adapted from a study by Denny \& Ochsner (2014). Before the task, participants are instructed that they will be presented pictures and that these pictures will be preceded by a condition specific cue signaling the appropriate strategy during picture viewing. Participants are instructed to indicate their affective response to the image on a rating scale. The task involves 4 conditions: 1) Negative-decrease: participants are asked to view negative pictures and to decrease their affective response by reappraising the negative event. 2) Negative-attend/ 3) Neutral-attend/ 4) Positive-attend: participants are asked to view pictures and to respond naturally to them without trying to alter their affective response. The training task will be repeated over 4 training sessions.

  • BehavioralControl Training

    The task in the control group is implemented to account for unspecific effects and is as similar as possible to the CR task except that it involves no negative-decrease (i.e., no reappraisal) condition. Instead, the control task only involves the three attend conditions (negative- attend, neutral-attend, positive-attend).

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Change in negative and positive affect via the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children-Short Form (PANAS-C-SF)

    A change in negative affect will be assessed based on the Negative Affect scale of the PANAS-C-SF. This scale ranges from one to five, with higher scores indicating more negative affect. A change in positive affect will be assessed based on the Positive Affect scale of the PANAS-C-SF. This scale ranges from one to five, with higher scores indicating more positive affect.

    Time frame: Over the course of the four training sessions, which will take place within the time frame of two weeks. This outcome measure will be reassessed at follow-up (2 weeks after the end of the entire training).

  2. Change in perceived stress via the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10)

    Change in perceived stress will be assessed based on the German adaption of the PSS-10. This scale ranges from 1-5, with higher scores indicating more perceived stress.

    Time frame: During each of the four training sessions, which will take place within the time frame of two weeks. This outcome measure will be reassessed at follow-up (two weeks after the end of the training sessions).

  3. Change in rumination as assessed via the German adaptation of the Response Style Questionnaire (RSQ-D)

    Change in rumination will be assessed based on two separate rumination subscales of the RSQ-D. The self-focused rumination scale ranges from 7-28, with higher scores indicating higher self-focused rumination. The symptom-focused rumination scale ranges from 8-31, with higher scores indicating higher symptom-focused rumination.

    Time frame: Pretraining & after completion of the last of four training session. The training sessions will take place within the time frame of two weeks. This outcome measure will be reassessed at follow-up (two weeks after the end of the training sessions).

  4. Change in depressive Symptoms via the Beck Depression Inventory - Second Edition (BDI-II)

    Change in depressive symptoms will be assessed based on the BDI-II. This scale ranges from 0-63, with higher scores indicated more depressive symptoms.

    Time frame: Pretraining & after completion of the last of four training session. The training sessions will take place within the time frame of two weeks.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Changes in the downregulation of affective behavioral responses to negative pictures via CR based on the self-assessment manikin scale

    Affective behavioral responses to negative pictures will be continuously assessed during each of the four training sessions. This assessment is based on the self-assessment manikin scale for valence (Bradley \& Lang, 1994), which is a 9-point rating scale with higher scores indicating higher positive affect. To obtain a behavioral index of downregulated affect in the CR training group, averaged behavioral affective responses during an attend condition will be subtracted from averaged behavioral affective responses during an active regulate condition.

    Time frame: During each of the four training sessions, which will take place within the time frame of two weeks.

  2. Changes in the downregulation of the LPP (late positive potential) to negative pictures via CR

    The LPP elicited to negative pictures will be continuously assessed during each of the four training sessions. To calculate the downregulation of the LPP via CR in the CR training group, the averaged LPP during an attend condition will be subtracted from the averaged LPP during an active regulate condition.

    Time frame: During each of the four training sessions, which will take place within the time frame of two weeks.

  3. Changes in the percent gaze fixations in emotional areas of interest within negative pictures

    Changes in the percent duration of gaze fixations within a-priori defined emotional interest areas within negative pictures will be exploratively assessed over the course of the four training sessions.

    Time frame: During each of the four training sessions, which will take place within the time frame of two weeks.

07

Study locations

1 site
  • Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Munich, Munich, Germany
    Munich, Bavaria 80336, Germany
08

References and documents

Publications

  • Denny BT, Ochsner KN. Behavioral effects of longitudinal training in cognitive reappraisal. Emotion. 2014 Apr;14(2):425-33. doi: 10.1037/a0035276. Epub 2013 Dec 23. PubMed 24364856 ↗
  • Bradley MM, Lang PJ. Measuring emotion: the Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 1994 Mar;25(1):49-59. doi: 10.1016/0005-7916(94)90063-9. PubMed 7962581 ↗
  • Greimel E, Feldmann L, Piechaczek C, Oort F, Bartling J, Schulte-Ruther M, Schulte-Korne G. Study protocol for a randomised-controlled study on emotion regulation training for adolescents with major depression: the KONNI study. BMJ Open. 2020 Sep 10;10(9):e036093. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-036093. PubMed 32912977 ↗

Individual participant data

Plan to share: No — Data in our study contains sensitive patient information, such as sociodemographic information and comorbidities. Since patients could possibly be identified by making our raw data publicly available, ethical principles of protecting patient confidentiality would be breached. Aggregated group data can be made available upon request.

09

Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Aug 23, 2022, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
10

Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT03957850
Lead sponsor
Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich
Collaborators
German Research Foundation, RWTH Aachen University, University of Amsterdam
Responsible party
Ellen Greimel (Postdoctoral Researcher, Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich) — Principal investigator
First posted
May 21, 2019
Start date
May 27, 2019
Primary completion
Nov 22, 2021
Completion
Nov 22, 2021
Last update
Aug 23, 2022

Study contacts

Ellen Greimel, PhD
principal investigator · Department of Child&Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics&Psychoth.,LMU Munich

Oversight

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

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