Ecological Momentary Assessment Research Articles

Design and rationale for a randomized clinical trial testing the efficacy of a lifestyle physical activity intervention for people with HIV and engaged in unhealthy drinking

BackgroundAmong people living with HIV (PLWH), unhealthy drinking presents an increased risk for negative outcomes. Physical inactivity and sedentariness raise additional health risks. Despite evidence that physical activity (PA) is associated with improved physical and mental functioning and reduced alcohol cravings, there have been no PA studies conducted with PLWH engaged in unhealthy drinking. We describe a study protocol of a remote lifestyle physical activity (LPA) intervention to increase PA and reduce alcohol consumption among PLWH. MethodsUsing online advertisements, 220 low-active PLWH engaged in unhealthy drinking will be recruited and randomized nationwide. After providing informed consent and completing a baseline interview, participants will receive a Fitbit. Participants will complete 15 days of ecologic momentary assessment through a phone application and up to 15 days of Fitbit wear time. Following this period, participants will be randomly assigned to a Fitbit-only control condition or a LPA and Fitbit intervention condition. Health counselors meet with control participants once (and have 6 subsequent brief check ins on Fibit use) and with intervention participants 7 times for PA counseling over a 12-week period. Follow-up assessments will be conducted at 3- and 6-months post-randomization. We hypothesize that individuals in the LPA and Fitbit condition will have lower rates of alcohol consumption and higher rates of PA at 6-month follow-up. ConclusionThe randomized controlled trial described in this paper investigates remote methods to influence multimorbidity among PLWH using a LPA approach for increasing PA and reducing alcohol consumption.

Habitual behavioural control moderates the relation between daily perceived stress and purging.

Evidence suggests that interpersonal stress plays a role in maintaining binge eating and purging (e.g., self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives). Stress is especially likely to promote engagement in maladaptive behaviour if the behaviour is habitual; therefore, individuals whose binge eating and/or purging are habitual may be particularly likely to engage in these behaviours in the context of interpersonal stress. We aimed to investigate this hypothesis in a sample of women with binge eating and/or purging using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Women (N=81) with binge-eating and/or purging symptoms completed a self-report measure assessing habit strength of binge eating and purging followed by a 14-day EMA protocol assessing daily perceived interpersonal stress and binge-eating and purging episodes. Habit strength of purging moderated the within-person effect of interpersonal stress on purging frequency, such that higher daily stress was associated with greater same-day purging frequency when purging was more habitual. Contrary to expectations, the interactive effect of habit strength of binge eating and daily interpersonal stress on same-day binge-eating frequency was non-significant. Findings suggest that individuals with habitual purging may be vulnerable to engaging in purging when they are experiencing high levels of interpersonal stress.

M78 - Emotion Regulation Expectancies and Smoking Cessation Factors: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study During a Practice Quit Attempt

M78 - Emotion Regulation Expectancies and Smoking Cessation Factors: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study During a Practice Quit Attempt

Predicting adherence to ecological momentary assessments

Smartphones allow for prompting users with a short questionnaire about their current subjective experience, a technique often called Ecological Momentary Assessments. One of the biggest challenges for such studies is a lack of adherence, diminishing the benefits for both user and researcher. Being able to predict if a user is going to stop answering the questionnaire prompts would be beneficial for researchers and developers. This would allow for, for example, specifically addressing those users, or for over-sampling populations at higher risk of dropping out of a study. In this work, based on an observational study of the general population, we analyzed data from almost 1,000 users. The data include a large variety of sensor data from the users’ smartphones. We utilized machine learning to predict adherence on a day-to-day level, as well as predict adherence based on participant data after on-boarding. For day-to-day prediction, the best performing model was a model based on metadata features (days since first questionnaire was filled out, days since the last questionnaire was filled out, number of filled-out questionnaires, days since app installation), yielding an area under the precision–recall curve of 0.89. The inclusion of sensor data did not improve the model’s performance, indicating that the high cost of collecting and processing sensor data is not worth the benefits for predicting fill-out behavior. Predicting at sign-up if a user will adhere to a questionnaire prompt at least once was better than chance, but further studies are needed.

Characterization of chronic pain, pain interference, and daily pain experiences in adult survivors of childhood cancer: a report from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study.

Although survivors of childhood cancer are at an increased risk, little is known about the prevalence of chronic pain, associated interference, and daily pain experiences. Survivors (N = 233; mean age = 40.8 years, range 22-64 years; mean time since diagnosis = 32.7 years) from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study completed pain and psychosocial measures. Survivors with chronic pain completed 2-week, daily measures assessing pain and psychological symptoms using mHealth-based ecological momentary assessment. Multivariable-modified Poisson and linear regression models estimated prevalence ratio estimates (PR) and mean effects with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for associations of key risk factors with chronic pain and pain interference, respectively. Multilevel mixed models examined outcomes of daily pain and pain interference with prior day symptoms. Ninety-six survivors (41%) reported chronic pain, of whom 23 (24%) had severe interference. Chronic pain was associated with previous intravenous methotrexate treatment (PR = 1.6, 95% CI 1.1-2.3), respiratory (PR = 1.8, 95% CI 1.2-2.5), gastrointestinal (PR = 1.6, 95% CI 11.0-2.3), and neurological (PR = 1.5, 95% CI 1.0-2.1) chronic health conditions, unemployment (PR = 1.4, 95% CI 1.0-1.9) and clinically significant depression and anxiety (PR = 2.9, 95% CI 2.0-4.2), as well as a diagnosis of childhood Ewing sarcoma or osteosarcoma (PR = 1.9, 95% CI 1.0-3.5). Higher pain interference was associated with cardiovascular and neurological conditions, unemployment and clinical levels of depression and/or anxiety, and fear of cancer recurrence. For male, but not female survivors, low sleep quality, elevated anxiety, and elevated depression predicted high pain intensity and interference the next day. A substantial proportion of childhood cancer survivors experience chronic pain and significant associated interference. Chronic pain should be routinely evaluated, and interventions are needed.

Investigating the cognitive and affective dynamics of social media addiction: Insights from peer contexts.

Informed by the interaction of person-affect-cognition-execution (I-PACE) theory, the present studies examined the association between peer rejection, peer popularity, and social media addiction (SMA) at both between-person and within-person levels. Two distinct processes, the fear-driven/compensation-seeking process and the reward-driven process were explored. In Study 1, using a cross-sectional sample of high school students (N = 318), both processes were supported via different cognitive mediators. Support for the fear-driven/compensation-seeking process was demonstrated by finding that avoidance expectancy was a significant cognitive mediator between peer-nominated rejection and SMA. In turn, the reward-driven process was supported by the significant mediation of reward expectancy between peer-nominated popularity and SMA. In Study 2, using ecological momentary assessment with college students (N = 54), we found the fear-driven/compensation-seeking process partially supported through both between-person and within-person mediations. Specifically, negative affect and social media craving were two affective mediators that linked peer rejection and addictive social media use behaviors. On the other hand, the reward-driven process was predominantly supported by within-person mediations, in which positive affect and social media craving were found to be mediators of the relationship between peer popularity and addictive social media use behaviors. The results underscore that adolescents experiencing rejection tend to use social media to avoid negative feelings and compensate for interpersonal deficits, while adolescents experiencing popularity tend to use social media to maintain positive feelings and gain social rewards. Implications for the assessment, case formulation, and treatment of SMA in counseling practice are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A - 19 Reliability of Mobile Ecologic Momentary Assessment Platform ReCoUPS to Monitor Concussion Symptoms and Psychological HRQoL

A - 19 Reliability of Mobile Ecologic Momentary Assessment Platform ReCoUPS to Monitor Concussion Symptoms and Psychological HRQoL

Mentalisation-based online intervention for psychologically distressed parents: protocol of a non-randomised feasibility trial of the Lighthouse Parenting Programme-Online (LPP-Online)

IntroductionOnline-based interventions provide a low-threshold way to reach and support families. The mentalisation-based Lighthouse Parenting Programme is an established intervention aimed at preventing psychopathological development in children. The objective of...

A biobehavioral observational study to understand the multilevel determinants of cardiovascular health in Black women: the BLOOM Study protocol

BackgroundThe racial/ethnic and gender disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality in the United States are evident. Across nearly every metric, non-Hispanic Black women have poorer overall cardiovascular health. Emerging evidence shows a disproportionately high burden of increased CVD risk factors in Black women of childbearing age, which has a far-reaching impact on both maternal and child outcomes, resulting in premature onset of CVD and further widens the racial disparities in CVD. There is growing recognition that the fundamental driver of persistent racial/ethnic disparities in CVD, as well as disparities in behavioral risk factors such as physical activity and sleep, is structural racism. Further, the lived personal experience of racial discrimination not only has a negative impact on health behaviors, but also links to various physiological pathways to CVD risks, such as internalized stress resulting in a pro-inflammatory state. Limited research, however, has examined the interaction between daily experience and health behaviors, which are influenced by upstream social determinants of health, and the downstream effect on biological/physiological indicators of cardiovascular health in non-pregnant Black women of childbearing age.Methods/DesignThe BLOOM Study is an observational study that combines real-time ambulatory assessments over a 10-day monitoring period with in-depth cross-sectional lab-based physiological and biological assessments. We will use a wrist-worn actigraphy device to capture 24-h movement behaviors and electronic ecological momentary assessment to capture perceived discrimination, microaggression, and stress. Blood pressure will be captured continuously through a wristband. Saliva samples will be self-collected to assess cortisol level as a biomarker of psychological stress. Lab assessments include a fasting venous blood sample, and assessment of various indices of peripheral and cerebral vascular function/health. Participants’ address or primary residence will be used to obtain neighborhood-level built environmental and social environmental characteristics. We plan to enroll 80 healthy Black women who are between 18 and 49 years old for this study.DiscussionResults from this study will inform the development of multilevel (i.e., individual, interpersonal, and social-environmental levels) lifestyle interventions tailored to Black women based on their lived experiences with the goal of reducing CVD risk.ClinicalTrials.gov IdentifierNCT06150989.

Linking social reward responsiveness and affective responses to the social environment: An ecological momentary assessment study.

Social support is a key predictor of well-being, but not everyone experiences mental health benefits from receiving it. However, given that a growing number of interventions are based on social support, it is crucial to identify the features that make individuals more likely to benefit from social ties. Emerging evidence suggests that neural responses to positive social feedback (i.e., social reward) might relate to individual differences in social functioning, but potential mechanisms linking these neural responses to psychological outcomes are yet unclear. This study examined whether neural correlates of social reward processing, indexed by the reward positivity (RewP), relate to individuals' affective experience following self-reported real-world positive social support events. To this aim, 193 university students (71% females) underwent an EEG assessment during the Island Getaway task and completed a 10-day ecological momentary assessment where participants reported their positive and negative affects (PA, NA) nine times a day and the count of daily positive and negative events. Experiencing a higher number of social support positive events was associated with higher PA. The RewP moderated this association, such that individuals with greater neural response to social feedback at baseline had a stronger positive association between social support positive events count and PA. Individual differences in the RewP to social feedback might be one indicator of the likelihood of experiencing positive affect when receiving social support.

Objective Neighborhood-Level Disorder Versus Subjective Safety as Predictors of HIV Transmission Risk and Momentary Well-Being.

Mental health and HIV risk behavior have been studied with ecological momentary assessment (EMA), but this approach has not been combined with tracking of activity space (where people go and what they encounter there) in people with HIV and their social relations, who may be HIV+ or HIV-. Activity space represents a modifiable risk or protective factor for behavior related to health status and quality of life, in both clinical and nonclinical populations. We conducted an observational study with 286 participants (243 HIV+ and 43 HIV-), roughly matched for socioeconomic status and neighborhood of residence via three waves of snowball sampling. Each participant carried a smartphone for up to 4weeks, making 5 randomly prompted entries and 1 end-of-day entry each day, plus self-initiated event-contingent entries for sexual activity and drug use. Responses to randomly prompted items provided subjective evaluations of the safety of the participant's current social and physical environment (the place they were and the people they were with). GPS-based location tracking-coupled with publicly available statistic indicating neighborhood-level physical disorder and socioeconomic disadvantage-provided an indicator of each participant's exposure to objective psychosocial hazard. We examined possible relationships of these objective and subjective environmental exposures with risky sexual and intravenous drug-use behavior, knowledge and utilization of antiretroviral treatment and prophylaxis, and momentary mental health (mood and stress, which relate to risky behavior and overall well-being). We found that both risky behavior and mental health were more related to participants' subjective evaluations of their activity space than to objective measures of neighborhood-level disorder, suggesting that, even within an objectively hazardous neighborhood, people who find a niche they perceive as socially and physically safe may engage in less risky behavior and have better well-being.Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier NCT01571752.

Media Use and Its Associations With Paranoia in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder: Ecological Momentary Assessment.

Paranoia is a spectrum of fear-related experiences that spans diagnostic categories and is influenced by social and cognitive factors. The extent to which social media and other types of media use are associated with paranoia remains unclear. We aimed to examine associations between media use and paranoia at the within- and between-person levels. Participants were 409 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum or bipolar disorder. Measures included sociodemographic and clinical characteristics at baseline, followed by ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) collected 3 times daily over 30 days. EMA evaluated paranoia and 5 types of media use: social media, television, music, reading or writing, and other internet or computer use. Generalized linear mixed models were used to examine paranoia as a function of each type of media use and vice versa at the within- and between-person levels. Of the 409 participants, the following subgroups reported at least 1 instance of media use: 261 (63.8%) for using social media, 385 (94.1%) for watching TV, 292 (71.4%) for listening to music, 191 (46.7%) for reading or writing, and 280 (68.5%) for other internet or computer use. Gender, ethnoracial groups, educational attainment, and diagnosis of schizophrenia versus bipolar disorder were differentially associated with the likelihood of media use. There was a within-person association between social media use and paranoia: using social media was associated with a subsequent decrease of 5.5% (fold-change 0.945, 95% CI 0.904-0.987) in paranoia. The reverse association, from paranoia to subsequent changes in social media use, was not statistically significant. Other types of media use were not significantly associated with paranoia. This study shows that social media use was associated with a modest decrease in paranoia, perhaps reflecting the clinical benefits of social connection. However, structural disadvantage and individual factors may hamper the accessibility of media activities, and the mental health correlates of media use may further vary as a function of contents and contexts of use.

Web-Based Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Bulimia Nervosa

Despite the existence of effective treatments, many individuals with bulimia nervosa (BN) do not receive evidence-based therapies. Integrating digital interventions into routine care might reach more patients and reduce the clinical burden of BN. To evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based cognitive behavioral self-help intervention for individuals with BN. A 2-group randomized clinical trial without follow-up was conducted between February 2, 2021, and July 9, 2022, in Germany. Participants aged between 18 and 65 years who met the diagnostic criteria for BN were enrolled online via self-referral. Data analyses were conducted from October 24, 2022, to December 23, 2023. A web-based cognitive behavioral self-help intervention including 12 weekly modules was compared with a waiting-list control group only having access to routine care. The primary outcome was the change in the number of bulimic episodes between baseline and posttreatment. Secondary outcomes included changes in global eating disorder symptoms, clinical impairment, well-being, work capacity, comorbid symptoms, self-esteem, and emotion regulation complemented by weekly measures and ecological momentary assessment. Intention-to-treat analyses were performed. Participants (N = 154; mean [SD] age, 29.6 [8.6] years; 149 [96.8%] female) receiving the web-based intervention demonstrated a significantly greater decrease in bulimic episodes compared with the control group (Cohen d = -0.48; 95% CI, -0.75 to -0.20; P < .001), representing a significant change in binge-eating episodes (Cohen d = -0.61; 95% CI, -0.89 to -0.33; P < .001), but not in compensatory behaviors (Cohen d = -0.25; 95% CI, -0.51 to 0.02; P = .21). The intervention was superior in improving global eating disorder symptoms (Cohen d = -0.61; 95% CI, -0.89 to -0.32; P < .001) and clinical impairment (Cohen d = -0.62; 95% CI, -0.92 to -0.33; P < .001). No significant effects were found for well-being (Cohen d = -0.08; 95% CI, -0.37 to 0.22; P > .99) and work capacity (Cohen d = -0.01; 95% CI, -0.68 to 0.66; P = .99). Exploratory analyses indicated significant changes in self-esteem and emotion regulation difficulties, but not in comorbid symptoms. In this randomized clinical trial, a web-based cognitive behavioral self-help intervention effectively decreased eating disorder symptoms and illness-related burden in individuals with BN, underlining the potential of digital interventions to complement established treatments. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04876196.

Examining whether young adults differ in their endorsement and subjective evaluation of alcohol consequences by age, drinking frequency, and current undergraduate status.

There is considerable variability in how young adults (YAs) perceive drinking-related consequences, and some researcher-identified "negative" consequences are viewed by YAs as neutral or even somewhat positive. Little is known about individual difference factors that may influence subjective evaluations of alcohol consequences. We tested whether endorsement and subjective evaluation ('extremely negative' to 'extremely positive') of 24 alcohol-related "negative" consequences differed by age (18-20, 21-27), past 3-month drinking frequency (3x/month or less, weekly or more), and current undergraduate status (4-year undergraduate, non-student). YAs were recruited for a longitudinal ecological momentary assessment study on cognitions and alcohol use. Participants in the analytic sample (N=640; 48.1% White non-Hispanic/Latinx, 50.0% female, mean age=22.2 years, SD=2.3) reported past 3-month drinking. Past 3-month drinking frequency, negative consequences (total and item-level), and subjective evaluations of consequences were assessed cross-sectionally. Compared to YAs 18-20, YAs 21+ experienced fewer total consequences, were significantly less likely to endorse experiencing physical/behavioral consequences, and rated these consequences more negatively if they were endorsed. YAs who drank weekly or more reported experiencing more consequences and were significantly more likely to experience all 24 consequences in comparison to YAs who drank 3x/month or less. Subjective evaluation ratings did not significantly differ by drinking frequency. There were few differences between 4-year undergraduate and non-undergraduates; non-undergraduates rated several health/responsibility-related consequences more negatively. Findings highlight the importance of identifying individual difference factors that contribute to subjective evaluation ratings, and may be useful for tailoring brief, personalized alcohol interventions for YAs.

Aging in Place: Toward Understanding Momentary Well-Being and Daily Satisfaction of Older People

Few studies have investigated how older people’s daily activities and characteristics of the surrounding urban environment affect their emotions and daily satisfaction. This study fills the research gap by using a paper-based survey and a smartphone ecological momentary assessment (EMA) application (with GPS tracking and pop-up surveys about activities) to study older people’s well-being in Hong Kong. Three hundred and two older adults completed the paper survey and forty-two of them further completed a six- to seven-day EMA survey. Based on a total of 1,530 activity episodes, generalized estimating equation models were developed to examine the relationship between older people’s socioeconomic background, activity participation, urban environment characteristics, and their feelings of happiness and calmness. Results show that older people’s daily life satisfaction is affected by the emotions they experienced throughout the day. In particular, a higher level of happiness was associated with socializing, leisure, and recreation activities taking place outside of the immediate neighborhood, and calmness was best achieved during passive relaxation and resting activities within the residential neighborhood. Furthermore, characteristics of the environment at activity locations are statistically significant in explaining momentary well-being. The findings support the planning for age-friendly cities and communities through encouraging older people to engage in activities outside their residential neighborhoods and designing activity locations with more leisure facilities, lower road density, and higher exposure to water bodies.

Emotional awareness is correlated with ambulatory heart rate variability: A replication and extension.

A positive association has previously been observed in healthy volunteers between emotional awareness (EA), the ability to identify and describe emotional experiences in oneself and others, and resting heart rate variability (HRV), which is dominated by vagus nerve activity. The current study aimed to investigate the EA-HRV association across multiple assessments in a "real-world" ambulatory context in patients with long QT syndrome (LQTS) who are at genetic risk for sudden cardiac death. Participants (157 LQTS patients; MeanAge = 35.1, SDAge = 10.4; 115 women) completed the levels of emotional awareness scale (LEAS) on one occasion, which served as our measure of EA. In an ecological momentary assessment study involving 10 assessments per day over three days, multiple 5-minute ECG assessments (Mean = 24.6, SD = 5.1) were obtained in each patient using a Holter monitor, from which high-frequency HRV (HF-HRV) was computed on each occasion. There was a significant positive association between LEAS scores and HF-HRV controlling for biobehavioral covariates. We also detected a similar inverse relation between EA and mean heart rate. These findings suggest that, in patients with a well-defined genetic risk for ventricular arrhythmia and sudden death, the ability to experience emotions in a complex and differentiated way covaries with greater parasympathetic influences on the heart. These findings are consistent with the overlapping neural substrates of EA and HRV and their common contribution to adaptive emotional responding, consistent with the Neurovisceral Integration Model.

Implementing Ecological Momentary Assessment in Audiological Research: Opportunities and Challenges.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a way to evaluate experiences in everyday life. It is a powerful research tool but can be complex and challenging for beginners. Application of EMA in audiological research brings with it opportunities and challenges that differ from other research disciplines. This tutorial discusses important considerations when conducting EMA studies in hearing care. While more research is needed to develop specific guidelines for the various potential applications of EMA in hearing research, we hope this article can alert hearing researchers new to EMA to pitfalls when using EMA and help strengthen their study design. The current article elaborates study design details, such as choice of participants, representativeness of the study period for participants' lives, and balancing participant burden with data requirements. Mobile devices and sensors to collect objective data on the acoustic situation are reviewed alongside different possibilities for EMA setups ranging from online questionnaires paired with a timer to proprietary apps that also have access to parameters of a hearing device. In addition to considerations for survey design, a list of questionnaire items from previous studies is provided. For each item, an example and a list of references are given. EMA typically provides data sets that are rich but also challenging in that they are noisy, and there is often unequal amount of data between participants. After recommendations on how to check the data for compliance, reactivity, and careless responses, methods for statistical analysis on the individual level and on the group level are discussed including special methods for direct comparison of hearing device programs.

“It frees your body from that pain thought”: A mixed-methods exploration of patterns, contexts, and experiences of cannabis use for pain in rural communities

U.S. adults increasingly report using cannabis to manage chronic pain and rural areas have inadequate comprehensive pain management. Using mixed methods, we aimed to understand how and why some rural adults use cannabis for pain, including within the context of co-use with opioids. Participants (N = 14, Oklahoma) were rural-dwelling adults who used tobacco and ≥1 other substance, including cannabis and opioids, ≥3 days per week. Participants completed 14 days of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) regarding substance use and subsequent in-depth interviews discussing maps of their substance use reports. Half (7/14) described cannabis use for chronic pain, and most of these (85%) reported use on ≥75% of EMA days. The most frequently reported cannabis use motive was therapeutic/medicinal (90% of use reports). Most reports were of combusted cannabis (88% of use reports) at home (99% of use reports). Same-day use of cannabis and opioids was relatively common (45% of daily surveys), but seemingly not within close temporal proximity. Interview narratives characterized cannabis as modifying pain-adjacent factors (eg, thoughts), not eliminating pain itself. They recounted using a repertoire of substances to manage different pain dimensions (eg, intensity, quality) and balance perceived trade-offs of different substances. Participants described high medical cannabis access, low pain specialist access, and most physicians as unwilling to discuss cannabis for pain. The findings suggest that rural-dwelling patients could benefit from increased access to comprehensive pain management, having cannabis addressed within pain management provider discussions, and that risks and benefits of cannabis use for pain must be better established. PerspectiveThis study used a geographically explicit EMA mixed method to gather rich, intensive pilot data on cannabis use and co-use for chronic pain in rural Oklahoma. It provides unique insights to inform future research on cannabis use among a vulnerable and understudied subgroup of adults with pain—rural residents.

Daily social isolation maps onto distinctive features of anhedonic behavior: A combined ecological and computational investigation

BackgroundLoneliness and social isolation have detrimental consequences on mental health and act as vulnerability factors for the development of depressive symptoms, such as anhedonia. The mitigation strategies used to contain the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), such as social distancing and lockdowns, allowed us to investigate putative associations between daily objective and perceived social isolation and anhedonic-like behavior. MethodsReward-related functioning was objectively assessed using the Probabilistic Reward Task (PRT). One hundred and fourteen unselected healthy individuals (71% females) underwent both a laboratory and an ecological momentary assessment. Computational modelling was applied to performance on the PRT to disentangle reward sensitivity and learning rate. ResultsFindings revealed that objective – but not subjective – daily social interactions were associated with motivational behavior. Specifically, higher social isolation (less time spent with others) was associated with higher responsivity to rewarding stimuli and a reduced influence of a given reward on successive behavioral choices. ConclusionsOverall, current results broaden our knowledge on the potential pathways linking (COVID-19-related) social isolation to altered motivational functioning.

A Smartphone App-Based Mindfulness Intervention to Enhance Recovery from Substance Use Disorders: Protocol for a Pilot Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial

BackgroundPoor long-term recovery outcomes after treatment (e.g., readmission to inpatient treatment) are common among individuals with substance use disorder (SUD). In-person mindfulness-based treatments (MBTs) are efficacious for SUDs and may improve recovery outcomes. However, existing MBTs for SUD have limited public health reach, and thus scalable delivery methods are needed. A digitally-delivered MBT for SUD may hold promise. Methods/Design: We recently developed Mindful Journey, a smartphone app-based adjunctive MBT for improving long-term recovery outcomes. In this paper, we present details on the app and describe the protocol for a single-site pilot feasibility randomized controlled trial of Mindful Journey. In this trial, individuals (n=34) in an early phase of outpatient treatment for SUD will be randomized to either treatment-as-usual (TAU) plus Mindful Journey or TAU only. The trial will focus on testing the feasibility (e.g., engagement) and acceptability of the app (e.g., perceived usability and helpfulness for recovery) of the app, as well as feasibility of study procedures (e.g., assessment completion). The trial will incorporate ecological momentary assessment before and after treatment to assess mechanisms in real-time, including mindfulness, craving, difficulties with negative emotion regulation, and savoring. To examine the sensitivity to change of outcomes (substance use, substance-related problems, and psychological distress) and mechanism variables (noted above), we will test within-treatment-condition changes over time. DiscussionThe proposed pilot trial will provide important preliminary data on whether Mindful Journey is feasible and acceptable among individuals with SUD. Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT05109507