This study examines whether a proactive thought control intervention can reduce negative core beliefs, cognitive biases, and anxiety symptoms in university students with social anxiety. Participants with elevated social anxiety (screened via the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale) are randomly assigned to either a proactive thought control group or a reactive control group. Both groups complete two computerized tasks - a Free Association Task and a Sentence Completion Task - across 180 trials. The proactive group is trained to generate only positive or neutral associations to socially threatening cues and receives real-time AI-powered sentiment feedback, while the reactive group responds freely without sentiment-based guidance. Outcomes including negative core beliefs, interpretation bias, attentional bias, state anxiety, and trait anxiety are assessed before and after the intervention using standardized measures (CBQ, WSAP, Dot Probe Task, STAI). The study uses a parallel-group randomized controlled trial design with repeated measures and aims to establish preliminary effect size estimates for future, larger-scale trials.
See this in plain English?
AI-rewrites the medical criteria so a patient or caregiver can understand them. Always confirm with the trial site.
Core Beliefs: Change in Negative Core Beliefs as Measured by the Core Belief Questionnaire (CBQ)
Timeframe: Baseline (pre-intervention) and immediately after intervention completion (post-intervention)
Interpretation Biases: Change in Interpretation Bias as Measured by the Word Sentence Association Paradigm (WSAP)
Timeframe: Baseline (pre-intervention) and immediately after intervention completion (post-intervention)
Attentional Biases: Change in Attentional Bias as Measured by the Dot Probe Task
Timeframe: Baseline (pre-intervention) and immediately after intervention completion (post-intervention)