Matching Treatments to Cognitive Deficits in Offenders With Substance Use Disorders
The Mind Research Network
288 participants
Mar 18, 2025
INTERVENTIONAL
Conditions
Summary
The goal of this clinical trial is to investigate the effect of two types of cognitive remediation training on real-world behavioral outcomes including substance use, institutional adjustment, and recidivism following release from prison. Each training type is designed to target one of two subtypes of antisocial criminal offenders, who are characterized by either: 1) Attention to context-based deficits, or 2) Affective cognitive control-based deficits. The main questions it aims to answer are: Does matching deficit type with targeted cognitive training improve outcomes (relative to mismatched training)? What are the functional brain mechanisms that underlie treatment change? Participants will: Be assigned to cognitive training that either does or does not match their deficit type. Complete six one-hour sessions of cognitive skills training. Complete pre and post-training behavioral tasks assessing self-regulation deficits. Complete structural MRI scans and functional MRI scans assessing cognitive control. Complete post-treatment follow-up assessments evaluating self-regulation, adjustment, and stressful life events, substance use and recidivism.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria10
- Currently incarcerated
- No uncorrectable auditory or visual deficits
- Able to speak and/or understand English
- th grade reading level or higher
- IQ score = 80 or above
- Lifetime history of substance use disorder based on DSM criteria
- No history of dementia or other cognitive disability
- No indication of current psychotic disorder
- No major medical illness or CNS disease
- Scores from the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) meet criteria for one of the designated treatment groups
Exclusion Criteria1
- \-
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Interventions
ATC training focuses on learning to attend to and integrate contextual cues present in the environment. Three tasks, Reversal Learning, Divided Visual Field, and Affective Gaze, require ATC functioning and provide individuals with practice noticing changes in contextual information, such as rule changes and using emotion information to modulate behavior.
ACC training focuses on providing individuals with practice inhibiting behavior, particularly within motivational or affective contexts. Three tasks, Shapes, Numbers, and Lottery, tap ACC functioning and place demands on the basic employment of cognitive control, such as task switching, as well as on the concurrent engagement of cognitive control and affective processing.
Locations(1)
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NCT06981351