Me and the Others: Expectations and Evaluation of Social Relationships

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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Chronic and pervasive loneliness has been identified as an important factor in the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACE) (e.g. abuse and neglect) and mental disorders. However, the mechanisms determining loneliness after ACE are still needed to be disentangled. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the differential effect of ACE on alterations in cognition and the link between ACE and loneliness with an emphasis on the effect of type and timing of ACE.

Detailed Description
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With the rationale of the detrimental effects of loneliness on mental and physical health may be based on the interactions between genetic predispositions and social-environmental influences (e.g. ACE) via affecting neurobiological and cognitive processing, goals of this project are 1) characterization of loneliness to understand whether people suffer from mental/somatic disorders, feel lonelier and this effect is particularly strong in those with a history of ACE, 2) understanding the determinants of chronic loneliness by investigating certain personality dispositions such as rejection sensitivity and justice sensitivity, genetic predisposition for loneliness and social environments during childhood and adolescence and 3) inquiring into the social-cognitive correlates of these potential determinants in people's life today

Official Title
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Loneliness, Social Belonging, and Adverse Childhood Experiences: Me and the Others: Expectations and Evaluation of Social Relationships

Conditions
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Life Change Events, Loneliness

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Questionnaires


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Healthy individuals with and without adverse childhood experiences + clinical control group (i.e. individuals with borderline personality disorder) Exclusion Criteria: A lifetime history of psychotic or bipolar I disorders, current pregnancy, history of organic brain disease, skull or brain damage, or severe neurological illnesses.

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years
Maximum Age: 60 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Trauma control group<br>Individuals with adverse childhood experiences (e.g.childhood abuse or neglect) will be included as the experimental group of participants. Individuals will fill out the designated questionnaires (e.g. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire, Loneliness questionnaires), will participate in a multimodal emotion recognition experiment as well as a virtual reality (VR) task. | Behavioral: Questionnaires<br>* The intervention will include the implication of related questionnaires, followed by a lab experiment for social belonging with multiple modalities. Participants will be shown pictures of different faces and asked to judge their feelings towards them. Further, a VR task will include finding the way through a virtual maze with the help of two virtual characters.<br>* Other names: Virtual maze task with the use of Virtual Reality (VR);|
| Healthy control group<br>Individuals with no trauma history will be added as the healthy control group of participants. Individuals will fill out the designated questionnaires (e.g. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire, Loneliness questionnaires), will participate in a multimodal emotion recognition experiment as well as a virtual reality (VR) task. | Behavioral: Questionnaires<br>* The intervention will include the implication of related questionnaires, followed by a lab experiment for social belonging with multiple modalities. Participants will be shown pictures of different faces and asked to judge their feelings towards them. Further, a VR task will include finding the way through a virtual maze with the help of two virtual characters.<br>* Other names: Virtual maze task with the use of Virtual Reality (VR);|
| Clinical control group<br>Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) will be added as a clinical control group. Individuals will fill out the designated questionnaires (e.g. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire, Loneliness questionnaires), will participate in a multimodal emotion recognition experiment as well as a virtual reality (VR) task. | Behavioral: Questionnaires<br>* The intervention will include the implication of related questionnaires, followed by a lab experiment for social belonging with multiple modalities. Participants will be shown pictures of different faces and asked to judge their feelings towards them. Further, a VR task will include finding the way through a virtual maze with the help of two virtual characters.<br>* Other names: Virtual maze task with the use of Virtual Reality (VR);|

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale | A 20-item scale designed to measure one's subjective feelings of loneliness as well as feelings of social isolation. Participants rate each item on a scale from 1 (Never) to 4 (Often). Ratings are summed up by taking the reversed items into consideration. | 10 mins | 
| Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ) | Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire will be used to measure the cognitive and affective components of the rejection experience, namely rejection expectancy and rejection concern. RSQ involves nine hypothetical interpersonal situations to measure how respondents would feel or think in stated situations. Items are answered on a 6-point Likert scale from 1= very unconcerned to 6= very concerned for the rejection concern and 1= very unlikely to 6= very likely for the rejection expectancy. By multiplying the results of the two levels, total rejection sensitivity score is calculated and higher scores indicate higher sensitivity to rejection. | 10 mins | 
| Justice Sensitivity Inventory (JSI) | JSI includes for questionnaire scales assessing victim, observer, beneficiary and perpetrator sensitivity on four subscales. Scores for each subscale range from 0 to 50 based on 10 items (6-point rating scale ranging from 0 to 5). Higher scores indicate a higher sensitivity to justice. JSI involves 4 each have 2 dimensions in terms of the applicability of the question for the self and the others. | 10 mins | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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loneliness, childhood adversities, childhood neglect, childhood abuse, rejection sensitivity, justice sensitivity