Amount Awarded: $25,000
This proposal unites the expertise of two established investigators, Drs. Hammar (Bergen) and Johnson (Berkeley), to develop an intervention informed by progress in our understanding of neurocognition in psychopathology. We aim to extend our prior work using cognitive remediation to improve cognitive processes implicated in emotion dysregulation. Our project includes three broad objectives: (1) To develop a novel cognitive remediation program to enhance cognitive abilities necessary for emotion regulation; (2) to evaluate our intervention in a pilot trial of adults, who will complete an initial assessment and then be randomized to the intervention immediately or to a waitlist condition. Immediate treatment participants will complete eight weekly training sessions and one follow-up assessment, whereas control participants will be offered remediation after the waitlist; and (3) to host our third international cognitive remediation research conference. Briefly, we propose to continue our collaborative scientific partnership to gather pilot data on this program - which we will use to seek external funding for a full-scale randomized controlled trial - leveraging existing support, equipment, and infrastructure as well as our experience conducting similar research. We further intend to facilitate cross-cultural scholarship exchange by inviting research team members to work directly in our respective laboratories.