Effect of Emotion Mindsets on Emotion Processing
Condition: Emotions
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The guiding scientific premise for this research is that a growth emotion mindset will
      promote more adaptive emotion processing than a fixed emotion mindset. Because emotional
      sensitivity is particularly salient in adolescent girls, we will focus on this group. Using
      an experimental design, adolescent girls will be randomly assigned to either a mindset
      manipulation or a control group (brain education). Each group will complete a 25-minute
      computer-based lesson followed by a social stressor and a functional magnetic resonance
      imaging session. Two specific aims will be addressed: (1) to determine whether a growth
      mindset induction, relative to a control condition, predicts more adaptive emotion processing
      at the neural, behavioral, and psychological levels of processing; and (2) to determine
      whether neural processing of emotion accounts for the effect of a growth emotion mindset
      manipulation on behavioral and psychological processing of emotion. This study builds on a
      strong empirical database establishing the effect of mindsets on multiple domains of
      functioning but will be the first to examine the implications of a growth vs. fixed mindset
      about emotion for emotion processing in adolescent girls, thereby elucidating one specific
      youth attribute that can support or disrupt emotional development.
    

Detailed description: 
      150 adolescent girls will complete baseline measures and then be randomly assigned to one of
      two conditions and will complete a computer-based lesson (see below). Girls will then engage
      in a social stressor outside of the scanner as well as an emotional challenge and cognitive
      control task in the scanner and will complete post-scan measures. Two and four months after
      the scan session they will complete additional survey measures.

      Experimental condition: The GEM manipulation, involves 6 components: (1) Introduction:
      discussion of emotional experiences in teenagers; (2) Explanation of neuroplasticity,
      emphasizing the potential for changes in the brain and modification of emotions during
      adolescence; (3) Scientific evidence for the effect of emotion regulation training on mood
      improvement; (4) Brief factual quizzes and written summary of key points; (5) Scenarios in
      which older youth describe challenging situations when they used growth mindsets to help
      regulate negative emotions; and (6) Self-persuasion exercise: a. Girls read a hypothetical
      scenario about an emotional challenge and describe their likely thoughts and feelings; b.
      Girls imagine the same event happening to another (younger) teen and help them understand how
      they can change, integrating what they learned about malleability of the brain and emotion.

      Control condition: The control condition involves a structurally similar session, with the
      same number and type of reading and writing activities, that focuses on general education
      about the brain.

      Social stressor. Using an adapted version of the Trier Social Stressor Test, girls will
      prepare a speech in which they convince a group of peers (who ostensibly will watch a video
      of the speech; in reality, there are no peers) that they should be selected for a fictional
      TV show about teens' ability to form friendships. Girls face a computer screen displaying
      their image while preparing and presenting a speech. At intervals of 20 seconds, a female
      evaluator will mark a clipboard. Before and after the Trier, girls will rate several
      dimensions of state negative affect. After the Trier, girls will rate their use of in vivo
      emotion regulation strategies.

      Girls will then undergo scanner training and watch a neutral video during an anatomical scan.

      Emotional challenge (Social Evaluation Task). Girls will watch validated videos created for
      functional magnetic resonance imaging, which depict females making one of three types of
      statements with matching affective expression: negative social-evaluative, positive
      social-evaluative, or neutral. Before each video, girls will receive a prompt instructing
      them to imagine how they would feel if the female were a friend and if the statement was
      directed either toward the participant (immerse), or toward a stranger (reframe). After the
      cue, there will be a pause, presentation of the video, and another pause. After each trial,
      the participant will rate how bad they feel on a 5-point scale.

      Resting state. Following the emotional challenge, girls will remain still and fixate on a
      central cross. Greater ability to flexibly engage and disengage emotion regulation in
      response to changing external challenges (imposed by negative, positive, and neutral videos)
      is expected to be reflected in the functional connectome for minutes beyond the emotional
      challenge task, resulting in more within-network connectivity in cognitive control networks
      as well as increased connectivity with emotion regions in girls engaged in proactive emotion
      regulation.

      Emotional go-nogo. This task combines a cognitive control task (go-nogo) with emotion
      distractors depicting negative (social rejection), positive (social acceptance), or neutral
      (scrambled) images taken from a validated set of stimuli. Letters are presented sequentially
      in a small box at the center of the screen, with emotion distractors in the background. The
      distractors are presented alone , prior to presentation of the letter, to make it difficult
      to ignore the emotional content. Girls are instructed to ignore the images and respond as
      quickly as possible without sacrificing accuracy with a button press to every letter (go
      trials), except for Xs (no-go; 25 percent of trials). Girls acquire a prepotent tendency to
      press and must inhibit their responses during X trials.

      Edited June 2020:

      Anticipated 75% and 100% enrollment dates as well as primary and final study completion dates
      and primary endpoint analyses and reporting of results were changed due to recruitment and
      data collection obstacles posed by the coronavirus pandemic. The new dates were estimated
      based on the assumption that some recruitment and data collection will resume in the fall of
      2020. If this is not possible or if families are reluctant to complete sessions, completion
      dates may need to be changed again at a later date.

      Edited November 2021:

      Although the 75% enrollment was reached, anticipated 100% enrollment date as well as primary
      and final study completion dates and primary endpoint analyses and reporting of results were
      changed due to ongoing recruitment and data collection obstacles posed by the coronavirus
      pandemic. Although a small amount of recruitment and data collection resumed fall of
      2020-fall of 2021, obstacles still remain due to school and family reluctance to participate
      in research.
    

Intervention name(s): Growth Mindset; Control
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Growth emotion mindset induction; Brain education
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Double (Participant, Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Basic Science
Keywords: Brain; Functional Neuroimaging; Stress, Psychological; Emotions; Psychology, Developmental