Robot-based Intervention to Improve Physical Activity in Older Adults
NCT ID: NCT06843161
Last Updated: 2025-03-04
Study Results
The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.
Basic Information
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RECRUITING
NA
40 participants
INTERVENTIONAL
2025-03-01
2025-09-30
Brief Summary
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There is growing support for the idea that human behaviour is the result of a combination of quick automatic processes and slower reflective processes. Interventional studies have used cognitive bias modification tasks that target the quick automatic processes to retrain participant's bias. Such studies find that participant's bias towards diet, alcohol, and phobias can be altered using these cognitive bias modification tasks.
In this study, the investigators developed a new training task using a robotic device that aims to retrain automatic bias towards physical activity and sedentary behaviours. The robotic device allows greater immersive environments for participants to interact with and be more engaged with the cognitive bias modification task. This interventional study is testing whether this new robot-based training and the protocol for assessing physical activity is feasible for retraining older adults' bias towards physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Participants will be examined on their daily physical activity using an accelerometer, their physical ability using functional tests, and their perceptions on physical activity using questionnaires. To determine whether this protocol is feasible, the investigators will examine participant recruitment and retention rates.
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Detailed Description
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Physical activity is one of the top contributors to health, reducing rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and depression. This wide spectrum of benefits is particularly important for older adults, who often suffer structural and functional deterioration across several physiological systems. Physical activity can reduce and delay the impact of this age-related deterioration in health and functional independence. However, in the Americas, more than 60% of older adults are physically inactive.
Current interventions to enhance physical activity in older adults rely mainly on reflective processes by providing rational information about the health benefits of a physically active lifestyle. From this perspective, changing conscious goals should lead to substantial behavioural change. Yet, meta-analyses indicate that these interventions are more effective in changing intentions than actual behaviour. Thus, new interventions targeting alternative processes are necessary to explore.
Recent work highlights that engagement in physical activity is governed not only by reflective processes, but also by automatic processes acting outside conscious awareness. For example, in active individuals, stimuli associated with physical activity attract attention, trigger positive affective reactions, and activate approach tendencies. These automatic reactions are thought to facilitate the translation of intention into action. From this perspective, physical inactivity is the result of an imbalance between strong negative automatic reactions to stimuli associated with physical activity and a relatively weaker intention to be physically active. This imbalance between reflective and automatic processes can be particularly pronounced in older adults, who are more likely to spontaneously associate physical activity with fear, pain, or discomfort felt during physical exercise. Therefore, older adults could be particularly responsive to and benefit the most from an intervention targeting the automatic reactions to physical activity and sedentary stimuli.
Interventions targeting automatic reactions to health-related stimuli have already proven to be successful in changing behaviour. For example, interventions have been used to retrain the automatic reaction to alcohol. Using a joystick, patients were repeatedly asked to avoid pictures on a screen that were related to alcohol and to approach pictures unrelated to alcohol. Results showed that adding to a regular treatment an intervention targeting cognitive bias reduced the relapse rates one year after treatment discharge by 9% to 13%. These interventions have also proven to be useful in impacting smoking, social anxiety, and eating behaviour.
Conditions
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Study Design
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RANDOMIZED
PARALLEL
TREATMENT
DOUBLE
Study Groups
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Interventional Group: Responses Biased towards Visual Stimulus
Successfully recruited individuals will be performing the JOGGNG Task on the Kinarm Endpoint Laboratory. This task requires participants to quickly make a reaching movement to manipulate a virtual avatar that is jogging across a field. During this, a frisbee will move towards the avatar and will tilt clockwise or counterclockwise. Participants have been instructed to either reach quickly to grab the frisbee from the air during clockwise tilts or to not move during counterclockwise tilts. This tilt/movement associated is reversed to control for potential bias in tilt angle and movement. An image of physical activity or sedentary behaviour will appear inside of the frisbee but participants are not told that it is associated with any of the tilts. For the Interventional Group, the tilt associated with movement will have an image of physical activity appear 90% of the time and the tilt associated with no movement will have an image of sedentary behaviour 90% of the time.
The jog or ground go no go task for retraining automatic bias
Recruited participants will be performing the JOGGNG Task on the Kinarm Endpoint Laboratory. This task requires participants to control a robotic handle to manipulate a virtual avatar that looks as if it is jogging across a field. During the jogging, a frisbee will appear and quickly move towards the avatar, eventually tilting clockwise or counterclockwise. Participants are required to either reach quickly to grab the frisbee from the air during clockwise tilts or to not move during counterclockwise tilts. This tilt/movement associated is reversed to control for a potential bias in tilt angle and movement. An image of physical activity or sedentary behaviour will appear inside of the frisbee but participants are not told that it is associated with any of the tilts. Each trial consists of one frisbee and participants will complete a total of 3 blocks of 360 trials each which will take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Control Group: Responses Randomly Assigned to Visual Stimulus
Recruited participants will be performing the JOGGNG Task on the Kinarm Endpoint Laboratory. This task requires participants to quickly make a reaching movement to manipulate a virtual avatar that is jogging across a field. During this, a frisbee will move towards the avatar and will tilt clockwise or counterclockwise. Participants have been instructed to either reach quickly to grab the frisbee from the air during clockwise tilts or to not move during counterclockwise tilts. This tilt/movement associated is reversed to control for potential bias in tilt angle and movement. An image of physical activity or sedentary behaviour will appear inside of the frisbee but participants are not told that it is associated with any of the tilts. For the Control Group, the tilt associated with movement will have an image of physical activity appear 50% of the time and the tilt associated with no movement will have an image of sedentary behaviour 50% of the time.
The jog or ground go no go task for retraining automatic bias
Recruited participants will be performing the JOGGNG Task on the Kinarm Endpoint Laboratory. This task requires participants to control a robotic handle to manipulate a virtual avatar that looks as if it is jogging across a field. During the jogging, a frisbee will appear and quickly move towards the avatar, eventually tilting clockwise or counterclockwise. Participants are required to either reach quickly to grab the frisbee from the air during clockwise tilts or to not move during counterclockwise tilts. This tilt/movement associated is reversed to control for a potential bias in tilt angle and movement. An image of physical activity or sedentary behaviour will appear inside of the frisbee but participants are not told that it is associated with any of the tilts. Each trial consists of one frisbee and participants will complete a total of 3 blocks of 360 trials each which will take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Interventions
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The jog or ground go no go task for retraining automatic bias
Recruited participants will be performing the JOGGNG Task on the Kinarm Endpoint Laboratory. This task requires participants to control a robotic handle to manipulate a virtual avatar that looks as if it is jogging across a field. During the jogging, a frisbee will appear and quickly move towards the avatar, eventually tilting clockwise or counterclockwise. Participants are required to either reach quickly to grab the frisbee from the air during clockwise tilts or to not move during counterclockwise tilts. This tilt/movement associated is reversed to control for a potential bias in tilt angle and movement. An image of physical activity or sedentary behaviour will appear inside of the frisbee but participants are not told that it is associated with any of the tilts. Each trial consists of one frisbee and participants will complete a total of 3 blocks of 360 trials each which will take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria
* Able to walk
* Able to communicate in English
* Able to travel to the University of Ottawa Lees Campus
Exclusion Criteria
* Impaired motor function of the upper limbs
* Unable to understand task instructions
60 Years
ALL
No
Sponsors
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Banting Research Foundation
UNKNOWN
Mitacs
INDUSTRY
Perley Health
UNKNOWN
University of Ottawa
OTHER
Responsible Party
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Kayne Park
Principal Investigator
Principal Investigators
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Kayne Park, PhD
Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
University of Ottawa
Matthieu P Boisgontier, PhD
Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
University of Ottawa
Locations
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Faculty of Health Sciences
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Countries
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Central Contacts
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Facility Contacts
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References
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Veling, H., Becker, D., Liu, H., Quandt, J., & Holland, R. W. How go/no-go training changes behavior: A value-based decision-making perspective. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2022;47:101206.
Scott SH. Apparatus for measuring and perturbing shoulder and elbow joint positions and torques during reaching. J Neurosci Methods. 1999 Jul 15;89(2):119-27. doi: 10.1016/s0165-0270(99)00053-9.
Rhodes RE, McEwan, D, Rebar AL. Theories of physical activity behavior change: A history and synthesis of approaches. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2019;42:100-9.
Marteau TM, Hollands GJ, Fletcher PC. Changing human behavior to prevent disease: the importance of targeting automatic processes. Science. 2012 Sep 21;337(6101):1492-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1226918.
Conroy DE, Hyde AL, Doerksen SE, Ribeiro NF. Implicit attitudes and explicit motivation prospectively predict physical activity. Ann Behav Med. 2010 May;39(2):112-8. doi: 10.1007/s12160-010-9161-0.
Chevance G, Bernard P, Chamberland PE, Rebar A. The association between implicit attitudes toward physical activity and physical activity behaviour: a systematic review and correlational meta-analysis. Health Psychol Rev. 2019 Sep;13(3):248-276. doi: 10.1080/17437199.2019.1618726. Epub 2019 Jun 12.
Cheval B, Tipura E, Burra N, Frossard J, Chanal J, Orsholits D, Radel R, Boisgontier MP. Avoiding sedentary behaviors requires more cortical resources than avoiding physical activity: An EEG study. Neuropsychologia. 2018 Oct;119:68-80. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.07.029. Epub 2018 Jul 26.
Cheval B, Sarrazin P, Isoard-Gautheur S, Radel R, Friese M. Reflective and impulsive processes explain (in)effectiveness of messages promoting physical activity: a randomized controlled trial. Health Psychol. 2015 Jan;34(1):10-9. doi: 10.1037/hea0000102. Epub 2014 Aug 18.
Cheval B, Boisgontier MP. The Theory of Effort Minimization in Physical Activity. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2021 Jul 1;49(3):168-178. doi: 10.1249/JES.0000000000000252.
Aulbach MB, Knittle K, Haukkala A. Implicit process interventions in eating behaviour: a meta-analysis examining mediators and moderators. Health Psychol Rev. 2019 Jun;13(2):179-208. doi: 10.1080/17437199.2019.1571933. Epub 2019 Feb 6.
Other Identifiers
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H-01-25-11168
Identifier Type: -
Identifier Source: org_study_id
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