An interventional study of Evaluative Conditioning with positive stimuli and Conditioning with neutral stimuli in Loneliness, sponsored by Education University of Hong Kong. Recruiting at 1 site in Hong Kong. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-09-10.
Sponsored by Education University of Hong Kong · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment
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.
Education University of Hong Kong is the lead sponsor of 35 studies on the registry; 11 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Exclusion Criteria:
Participants will be exposed to social stimuli paired with positive stimuli across multiple sessions.
Behavioral: Evaluative Conditioning with positive stimuli
Participants will be exposed to social stimuli paired with neutral stimuli across multiple sessions.
Behavioral: Conditioning with neutral stimuli
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.
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.
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.
Time frame: 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'.
Time frame: Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention
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).
Time frame: Baseline, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention
Social motivation towards social stimuli
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).
Time frame: 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
Time frame: 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
Time frame: 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
Time frame: Through study completion, on average of 4 months
Plan to share: No
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Education University of Hong Kong