Health TrialsbyHealthPanel

Parent Encouragement And Coaching of Happiness in Youth

ConditionsDepressionParent-Child Relations
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age4-99
SponsorUniversity of Pittsburgh

About this trial

The goal of this mechanistic clinical trial is to examine whether parent-coaching aimed at increasing child positive affect will increase child neural response to reward. The main questions it aims to answer are:

Aim 1. Characterize child neural reward response and its relation to maternal socialization of positive emotions at baseline in healthy young children.

Aim 2. Evaluate how coaching-related changes in maternal socialization of positive emotion expression contribute to increases in child neural reward response over time.

Aim 3. Examine how maternal socialization of positive emotion expression contributes to increases in child neural reward response in the moment.

Participating mother-child dyads will be randomized to either 3 sessions of parent coaching of child positive affect or 3 sessions of a general parenting support intervention and neural response to reward and affective behavior will be examined pre and post intervention.

Eligibility criteria

This trial accepts healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

Birth mother (biologically female, any gender)

Providing regular care for participating child (i.e., at least 50% of time)

Elevated, clinically significant levels of depression (16 or higher on CES-D)

Aged 18+

Disqualifiers

Lifetime history of a bipolar disorder

Lifetime history of a psychotic disorder

T-score greater than 63 on the internalizing or externalizing composites of the CBCL

Lifetime history of a psychiatric illness

Trial design

Design model

Parallel

Treatments tested in this trial

  • Parent Coaching

    Behavioral

    Three sessions of parent coaching of child positive affect will be administered based on modules from PCIT-ED.

  • Active Control

    Behavioral

    General parent support and psychoeducation based on components of standard PCIT.

Treatment groups

180 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groups
Group A: Parent CoachingExperimental treatment 1 intervention
Group B: Active ControlActive comparator 1 intervention

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

1

Reward Positivity (RewP)

The Reward Positivity (RewP) ERP component of the EEG signal is the mean amplitude (μV; microvolt) on gain-loss trials during receipt of reward related feedback in a computerized reward task with higher RewP amplitudes indicating greater reward response (i.e., more favorable outcome).

Time frame
From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)

Secondary outcomes

1

Parent Responses to Child Positive affect Scale (PRCPS)

Change in total score (sum of 7-point Likert scores) on the mother-reported Parent Responses to Child Positive affect Scale (PRCPS) encouragement subscale. The range of possible scores for this outcome is 0 to 84 with higher scores reflecting higher encouragement (i.e., more favorable outcome).

Time frame
From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)
2

Behavioral Coding of Parental Encouragement of Child Positive Emotion

Parent and child positive emotion will be coded separately on a 0 - 2 scale in 5 second increments. Parental encouragement of child positive emotion will be calculated as the proportion of epochs in which mothers display positive emotion subsequent to child positive emotion expression in the previous epoch. Higher scores indicate greater parental encouragement of child positive emotion (i.e., more favorable outcome).

Time frame
From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)
3

Late Positive Potential (LPP)

The Late Positive Potential (LPP) ERP component of the EEG signal is the mean amplitude (μV; microvolt) on positive-negative trials during a picture viewing computerized task. Great LPP amplitudes to positive vs. neutral pictures indicate greater response to positive affect (i.e., more favorable outcome).

Time frame
From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)

Other outcomes

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

University of Pittsburgh

Lead sponsor

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Collaborator

Source ClinicalTrials.gov
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