Clinical Research Directory

The Lexical Association Technique (LAT) was developed by Niveau, New, and Beaudoin in 2021 (Niveau et al., 2022). It is grounded in principles of memory functioning described in the cognitive psychology literature, particularly the theoretical framework of the Self-Memory System proposed by Conway (2000, 2005). The technique aims to enhance self-esteem by strengthening associative links between the self and positively valenced concepts stored in memory. To achieve this, it relies on the repeated mental visualization of positive autobiographical episodes paired with positive self-referential linguistic statements. The effectiveness of this technique in increasing self-esteem has been demonstrated and replicated across three studies, conducted with distinct samples: two involving healthy participants and one involving a clinical sample of individuals with a chronic illness (Niveau et al., 2022, 2023).

The active control condition is based on the same procedural structure as the Lexical Association Technique (LAT), but without the core therapeutic component - the self-referential content. Participants in the control group are exposed to a series of positive statements, similar in form and valence to those used in the LAT, but referring to others (e.g., generic social roles or entities such as teachers, pharmacists, or animals) rather than the self. Like in the LAT condition, participants are asked to generate mental imagery based on each statement, visualizing a corresponding positive episodic event. This ensures that the control task involves the same cognitive mechanisms (episodic memory retrieval, positive visualization, and sustained attention), while excluding the specific associative link to the self that constitutes the active ingredient of the intervention. This control condition was designed to match the LAT in terms of structure, cognitive demand, and duration, and has be