Emotional Processes in Adults With Intellectual Developmental Disorder

NCT ID: NCT07303270

Last Updated: 2025-12-24

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 60 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2026-01-20
• Study Completion Date: 2028-10-20

Brief Summary

Emotions play a crucial part in the quality of life, interpersonal relationships and mental health in general. In adults presenting with intellectual developmental disorder (IDD), emotional abilities may be hindered, thus leading to more challenging behaviors. A better understanding of the emotional processes of adults with IDD may help improve the efficiency of behavioral interventions and better improve their quality of life.

The primary goal of this study is to better characterize the abilities and weaknesses of adults with IDD concerning their emotional processes, in comparison to a healthy population. The secondary goals are :

• to determine if these difficulties are underlined by oculomotor and attentional (auditive and visual) processes
• to determine if the behavioral difficulties, related by the families of adults with IDD, are underlined by specific difficulties in facial emotional recognition, emotional identification in context and/or identification of vocal emotions.

Detailed Description

The study will be carried out in 3 steps :

Step 1: All participants will undergo tests to evaluate their intellectual abilities, and auditive and visual screening tests.

Step 2 : All participants will undergo neuropsychological tests assessing attentional and oculomotor abilities (1 hour). During this time, a member of the family of the participant will complete the questionnaires assessing behavior.

Step 3 : All participants will undergo the experimental ACQUISS protocol (task 1 : faces; task 2 : faces in context; task 3 : prosody) (1 hour).

Detailed Description:

Step 1 :

During this first step, all participants, of the 2 groups, will undergo the Raven Progressive Matrices (John and Raven 2003) to assess their intellectual abilities. They will then undergo an auditive screening test (tonality test) and a visual screening task (the Rossano-Weiss scale and the Palettes de Léa Grattins task).

Step 2 :

During this second step, all participants (of the 2 groups) will undergo :

1. - the tangled lines test (Rey, 1964) : in this task, the participant must follow by gaze entangled lines to determine the beginning and end of each line.

2. - the NSUCO oculomotor test (Maillet, 2015) : the orthoptist will evaluate the ability of the participant to carry out ocular saccades and movement pursuit.

3. - the Auditive attention task of the NEPSY-II battery (Korkman et al., 2012)

4. - 2 cancellation tests from the EVA battery (Chokron, 2010):

• the TeddyBear Cancellation test
• the single-letter cancellation test

Step 3:

During this step, all participants from the 2 groups will undergo the ACQUISS protocol.

Conditions

Intellectual Developmental Disorder

Keywords

Intellectual Developmental Disorder; emotional processing; Cognitive assessments; Social cognition

Study Design

• Allocation Method: NON_RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

IDD group

adults with Intellectual Developmental Disorder

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

ACQUISS protocol assessing emotional processing.

Intervention Type: OTHER

Task 1: 5 minute facial emotion recognition test to identify isolated facial expressions. 6 drawn faces, without gender bias, without hair, expressing the 6 universal emotions will be presented. The emotions are: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.

Task 2 : identifying a character's emotion in a social context (20 min). The subject is presented with drawn social contexts, one character is always in orange, and the face is left blank. The subject then has to choose amongst 6 emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust) which one would correspond the most to the emotion expressed by the character in orange.

Task 3 : recognizing vocal emotions (15 min). The subject is presented with dialogues of 3 sentences. The 3 sentences are expressed with a vocal emotion (same emotion for the 3 sentences). The contents of the sentences are neutral At the end of each dialogue, the subject has to show which emotion was expressed.

Control group

healthy adults

Group Type: OTHER

ACQUISS protocol assessing emotional processing.

Intervention Type: OTHER

Task 1: 5 minute facial emotion recognition test to identify isolated facial expressions. 6 drawn faces, without gender bias, without hair, expressing the 6 universal emotions will be presented. The emotions are: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.

Task 2 : identifying a character's emotion in a social context (20 min). The subject is presented with drawn social contexts, one character is always in orange, and the face is left blank. The subject then has to choose amongst 6 emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust) which one would correspond the most to the emotion expressed by the character in orange.

Task 3 : recognizing vocal emotions (15 min). The subject is presented with dialogues of 3 sentences. The 3 sentences are expressed with a vocal emotion (same emotion for the 3 sentences). The contents of the sentences are neutral At the end of each dialogue, the subject has to show which emotion was expressed.

Interventions

ACQUISS protocol assessing emotional processing.

Task 1: 5 minute facial emotion recognition test to identify isolated facial expressions. 6 drawn faces, without gender bias, without hair, expressing the 6 universal emotions will be presented. The emotions are: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.

Task 2 : identifying a character's emotion in a social context (20 min). The subject is presented with drawn social contexts, one character is always in orange, and the face is left blank. The subject then has to choose amongst 6 emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust) which one would correspond the most to the emotion expressed by the character in orange.

Task 3 : recognizing vocal emotions (15 min). The subject is presented with dialogues of 3 sentences. The 3 sentences are expressed with a vocal emotion (same emotion for the 3 sentences). The contents of the sentences are neutral At the end of each dialogue, the subject has to show which emotion was expressed.

Intervention Type: OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

IDD group :

• Diagnosis of IDD according to DSM-V criteria
• aged between 18 and 3 years
• french speaking
• Membership or entitlement to a social security plan
• informed consent, or that of the tutor, to take part in the study
• presence of a caregiver to complete the questionnaires at V2.

Control group :

• aged between 18 and 35 years
• french speaking
• Membership or entitlement to a social security plan
• Informed written consent to take part in the study.

Exclusion Criteria

IDD group :

• visual or auditive impairments, evaluated at V1
• non stabilized epilepsy
• undergoing treatments that can impact brain or psychological functioning
• major motor disorders
• breastfeeding or pregnant woman

Control group :

• neurodevelopmental or psychiatric disorder
• history of brain trauma (TBI, stroke, etc…) or non-stabilised epilepsy
• visual or auditive impairments, evaluated at V1
• non stabilized epilepsy
• undergoing treatments that can impact brain or psychological functioning
• major motor disorders
• breastfeeding or pregnant woman

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 35 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Hôpital le Vinatier

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Locations

CH Le Vinatier

Bron, , France

Countries

France

Central Contacts

Marie-Noelle Babinet, PhD

Role: CONTACT

Phone: +33437915380

Email: marie-noelle.babinet@ch-le-vinatier.fr

Méline Devaluez, PhD

Role: CONTACT

Phone: +33437915514

Email: meline.devaluez@ch-le-vinatier.fr

Facility Contacts

Marie-Noelle Babinet, PhD

Role: primary

Other Identifiers

2025-A01946-43

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id