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Reward Processing and Exposure Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder
Sponsor: University of California, Los Angeles
Summary
The investigators are conducting a clinical trial of therapy for public speaking anxiety. There are many eligibility criteria, but the main ones are that participants need to be socially anxious and have public speaking anxiety. In this clinical trial, all participants will do exposure therapy. Before doing exposure therapy in the study, though, participants will be randomized to do one of two treatments: i) a positive mood treatment, which is designed to increase how positive people feel, and ii) a relaxation treatment, which is designed to help people feel more relaxed. The investigators are doing this study to see whether doing the positive mood treatment or relaxation treatment first will affect how well exposure therapy works.
Official title: Reward Processing and Exposure Therapy
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - 60 Years
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
94
Start Date
2024-09-26
Completion Date
2029-04-30
Last Updated
2026-04-02
Healthy Volunteers
No
Conditions
Interventions
Positive Affect Treatment - Behavioral (PAT-B)
8 therapy sessions conducted individually with a therapist. Focuses on improving reward processing to increase positive emotional experience. Specific techniques include psychoeducation on mood cycle and positive emotions, mood monitoring, behavioral activation, and imaginal recounting and savoring of behavioral activation events. Intervention includes between-session practice.
Relaxation Treatment
8 therapy sessions conducted individually with a therapist. Focuses on mindfulness and relaxation skills. Specific techniques include mindfulness approaches from dialectical behavior therapy, diaphragmatic breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation. Intervention includes between-session practice.
Exposure Therapy
8 therapy sessions conducted individually with a therapist using the inhibitory retrieval model of exposure therapy. Sessions are designed to include four exposures each (32 exposures total). Each exposure is a public speech delivered to an audience. Goal of this treatment is to reduce public speaking anxiety. Principles of exposure therapy that will be incorporated are maximizing prediction error, maintaining attention to the situation/stimuli that are perceived predictors of the feared outcome (e.g., social rejection), removing safety signals, variability, engaging in post-exposure rehearsal/consolidation, deepened extinction, and positive occasion setter extinction. Intervention does not include between-session practice.
Locations (2)
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California, United States
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California, United States