An observational study in Social Anxiety Disorder, sponsored by Stanford University. Terminated at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2021-10-08.
Sponsored by Stanford University · Observational
This project aims to validate a virtual reality paradigm that assesses maladaptive avoidance behavior in social anxiety disorder. It also aims to generate a significant scientific advance by testing the hypothesis that maladaptive avoidance maintains anxiety through disruptions in safety learning.
Although occasional mild social anxiety is a common human experience, social anxiety disorder has a devastating impact on patients' lives, leaving them vulnerable to medical, psychiatric, and socioeconomic complications. A key feature of social anxiety disorder is avoidance of social and/or performance situations in which judgment and evaluation from others might occur. Reducing avoidance is therefore an important treatment goal.
Despite the importance of avoidance, however, it is very difficult to assess a patient's tendency to avoid. Many prior assessments of avoidance measure adaptive (i.e., helpful) avoidance, in which an individual learns to avoid a truly noxious stimulus. However, anxiety disorders are characterized by maladaptive avoidance, in which a relatively safe stimulus is avoided resulting in interference with the individual's goals. In this study, the first aim is to validate a virtual reality paradigm to measure maladaptive avoidance behavior in adults with social anxiety disorder. The second aim is to test whether maladaptive avoidance behavior relates to safety learning (measured by a fear extinction task).
4,868 studies on the registry are indexed under Anxiety Disorders; 1,388 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 4 is below the median of 150 across 606 observational studies indexed under Anxiety Disorders.
Browse Anxiety Disorders studies →Stanford University is the lead sponsor of 2,117 studies on the registry; 425 are open to participants now.
Of its 259 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 197 (76%) have results posted.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Adults with primary social anxiety disorder, community sample
Exclusion Criteria:
A group of adults with social anxiety disorder will be recruited for a psychological/behavioral research study.
Other: No intervention
There will be no intervention in this study. Adults with social anxiety disorder will complete research assessments related to fear and safety learning.
Maladaptive Avoidance Behavior
Latency (in milliseconds) to enter the quadrant of the avoidance task containing the image from the fear learning task
Time frame: Baseline
Maladaptive Avoidance Behavior (alternate measure)
Amount of time (in milliseconds) spent in the quadrant of the avoidance task containing the image from the fear learning task
Time frame: Baseline
Maladaptive Avoidance Behavior (2nd alternate measure)
Amount of time (in milliseconds) with center of gaze on the image from the fear learning task
Time frame: Baseline
Plan to share: Undecided
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
This study is terminated, as verified in Sep 2021. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Stanford University