Social CognitionCOBRANCT07759973
Neurocomputational Dynamics of Cooperation
A study testing Social Learning Task Battery, Clinical Cohort and Social Learning Task Battery, Online Cohort in people with Social Cognition and Personality Disorder, run by University of Pittsburgh at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
The purpose of this study is to understand brain function, how people make decisions when they interact with others, and how brain function and behavior relate to personality traits. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 to 100 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Social Cognition, Personality Disorder, Mental Health
- What is being tested?
- Social Learning Task Battery, Clinical Cohort and Social Learning Task Battery, Online Cohort
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 1,612 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- Dec 2026to 30 Jun 2031
- Phase
- Interventional
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 to 100 years
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult, Older adult
Online cohort inclusion criteria:
- English fluency
- US residency
- Owner of a desktop or laptop computer
- Adult aged 18-100
Online cohort exclusion criteria:
- Participants who have participated in an earlier version of the study
- Inability to consent
- Self-reported history of neurological disorder or brain damage
- Self-endorsed history of psychosis or mania
Clinical cohort inclusion criteria:
- Adult aged 20-60 years old
- English fluency
- Owner of a smartphone with celluar data
Clinical cohort exclusion criteria:
- Inability to consent
- Self-reported history of neurological disorder or brain damage
- Clinician-rated psychosis or mania in the last 6 months
- Current intoxication or withdrawal
- Estimated IQ < 70
- fMRI safety concerns
- Pregnancy
- Lack of stable psychiatric treatment (e.g., medication dosage, therapy modality) for the previous two months
Informant inclusion criteria:
- Adult aged 18+ years old
- English fluency
- Owner of a smartphone with celluar data
- Must have 4+ interactions/week with the participant for at least 6 months prior to study baseline
Informant exclusion criteria:
- Lack of a smartphone with cellular data at study baseline
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
United States1 site
University of Pittsburgh, Bellefield Towers
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15213
Michelle M Berry, MPS, 424-380-1194, berrymic@pitt.edu
Amanda Collier, BS, 412-901-2938, collieral@upmc.edu
About this study
The purpose of this study is to understand brain function, how people make decisions when they interact with others, and how brain function and behavior relate to personality traits.
Read the detailed description
Problems in cooperating with others define antagonism, a transdiagnostic dimension of psychopathology expressed in personality and externalizing disorders. People high on antagonism are prone to aggressive, callous, and exploitative behaviors that damage relationships and incur substantial costs in the form of productivity loss, substance misuse, and criminality. While clinical theories link antagonism to deficits in social cognition, it is hard to deny that exploiting others requires an understanding of their mind. This apparent contradiction can be resolved by distinguishing between two facets of antagonism: callousness and exploitativeness. Prior work by the investigators and preliminary data inform the hypothesis that exploitativeness reflects an enhanced capacity to learn about the mental states and behaviors of others coupled with an increased sensitivity to personal, rather than shared, rewards. In contrast, callousness reflects a broader insensitivity to social feedback. The investigators hypothesize that these dissociable social learning processes are instantiated in canonical circuits that expanded during anthropogenesis to support mentalizing and self-directed thought. These learning signals, which track behaviorally salient features of the social environment, are integrated in the posterior hub of the default network (DN) where they drive adaptive cooperation. This study proposes to test these hypotheses in two samples elevated on antagonism. At the behavioral level, participants are characterized using a battery of personality and psychopathology measures, social and reward-based decision-making tasks, and corresponding hierarchically estimated reinforcement learning (RL) models (Aim 1). In a model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, model-derived learning signals and facets of antagonism are linked to underlying neural activity during cooperative decision-making (Aim 2). Leveraging the multi-timescale design of our study, the investigators plan to relate neurocomputational signatures of callousness and exploitativeness to mentalizing abilities, multi-informant reports of momentary interpersonal behavior, and prospective stress generation. Certain elements of study design are withheld from this record to protect the scientific integrity of the study design.
- Being tested
- Social Learning Task Battery, Clinical Cohort, Social Learning Task Battery, Online Cohort
- Keywords
- Mental Health, Multi-informant EMA, Neuroimaging, fMRI, Informant, Multi-method, Ecological Momentary Assessment, Self-report, Longitudinal
- Medical subject headings
- Personality Disorders, Psychological Well-Being
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Social Learning Task Battery, Clinical CohortBehavioural
In the primary study task, participants engage in a modified iterative trust game. The task is completed in the fMRI scanner and takes about 35 minutes. Participant choices earn feedback in the form of monetary gains or losses. All participants are debriefed on the motivation behind the task at the end of their visit.
Social Learning Task Battery, Online CohortBehavioural
In the primary study task, participants engage in a modified iterative trust game. Participant choices earn feedback in the form of monetary gains or losses. All participants are debriefed on the motivation behind study task at the end of their visit.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Online Cohort | Experimental | The online cohort will include 718 adults ages 18-100 who will complete 1) a battery of behavioral tasks designed to assess social learning and mentalizing abilities, and 2) self-report measures assessing personality, externalizing symptoms, interpersonal functioning, and psychopathology. Receives: Behavioral: Social Learning Task Battery, Online Cohort |
| Clinical Cohort | Experimental | The study will enroll up to 416 clinical-cohort participants, with an anticipated final eligible sample of 239 adults ages 20-60 who will complete 1) a structured clinical interview and neuropsychological assessments, 2) self-report measures assessing personality, externalizing symptoms, interpersonal functioning, and psychopathology, 3) lab-based tasks designed to assess social learning and mentalizing abilities while monitoring physiological responding with Biopac, 4) task-based fMRI, 5) 21-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol, and 6) additional self-report questionnaires at three yearly follow-ups. The investigators expect to enroll 416 participants for the start of the protocol to yield 239 final eligible participants to complete fMRI and EMA. Receives: Behavioral: Social Learning Task Battery, Clinical Cohort |
| Informants | No intervention | Additionally, 2 informants (ages 18+) for each participant will be recruited to complete self-report measures, one of whom will also enroll in EMA. |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Participant-level Coaxing Score
Participant coaxing behavior will be measured during the primary social learning task. Coaxing will be operationalized as the difference in the participant's return rate between exchange and secrecy modes on trials in which the coplayer decides not to share. In exchange mode, the participant knows whether the coplayer chose to share or keep the monetary incentive before indicating whether they would return it. In secrecy mode, the participant must make the return decision before learning the coplayer's choice. The coaxing score is calculated as the exchange-mode return rate minus the secrecy-mode return rate. Scores range from -1 to 1, with positive values indicating greater strategic coaxing and 0 indicating no difference between modes.
Measured: During behavioral task visit at study baseline (clinical cohort) or during single online study session (online cohort)
Secondary outcomes (3)
Mean Informant-rated Momentary Manipulativeness
Manipulativeness will be assessed using the study-specific Interpersonal Dynamics EMA Battery. The informant-rated manipulativeness scale contains 3 items, each rated from 1 ("strongly disagree") to 5 ("strongly agree"). At each assessment, responses to the 3 items will be averaged to produce a momentary manipulativeness score that ranges from 1 to 5. Higher scores indicate greater informant-rated manipulativeness.
Measured: Post-baseline 21-day EMA period within year 1 of the study
Latent Mentalizing Factor
A latent mentalizing factor will be derived using CFA, with participants' scores on three social cognition tasks serving as indicators. The latent factor will be standardized to a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1 in the study sample and therefore has no fixed theoretical minimum or maximum. Higher factor scores indicate greater mentalizing ability.
Measured: Baseline
Interpersonal Stress
Interpersonal stress will be assessed using the marital- or partner-relationship and other-relationship life domains of the Stress and Adversity Inventory for Adults. At each follow-up, the frequency scores for stressors in these two domains will be averaged to produce an interpersonal stress score. The score ranges from a minimum of 0 stressors, with no limit on reported stressor maximums. Higher scores indicate more frequent exposure to interpersonal relationship stressors.
Measured: At 12, 24, and 36 months after baseline
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted12 Aug 2026
- Study startDec 2026 (estimated)
- Primary completion30 Jun 2031 (estimated)
- Study completion30 Jun 2031 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Other trials for Social CognitionStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- More trials run by University of PittsburghThe sponsor's other registered studies.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Non-randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Model description
- The study involves three arms: the Clinical Cohort, Online Cohort, and Informants. The Clinical and Online cohorts will receive the intervention, a Social Learning task battery, while informants will provide observational data and will receive no intervention. The Clinical and Online cohorts will each complete a version of the Social Learning task battery specific to their group assignment.
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Enrolment
- 1,612 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- University of Pittsburgh
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Emory University, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
- Responsible party
- Principal investigator, Timothy Allen, University of Pittsburgh
- Investigators
- Timothy A Allen, PhD, Principal investigator, University of Pittsburgh
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07759973
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- STUDY25050217
- Other IDs
- R01MH140901
- Acronym
- COBRA
- Status last verified
- Aug 2026
- First submitted
- 6 Aug 2026
- Last updated
- 6 Oct 2026
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- Yes: Individual participant data (IPD) will be shared via the National Institute of Mental Health Data Archive (NDA) in accordance with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Data Management and Sharing Policy. Data will be de-identified and made available to qualified researchers upon request after publication of primary results or completion of the study, as outlined in the NIH-approved Data Sharing Plan. Task code will be posted on GitHub and/or OSF.