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NCT Number: NCT07303270

Emotional Processes in Adults With Intellectual Developmental Disorder

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 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 attention (auditory and visual) processes * to determine if behavioral difficulties, as reported by the families of adults with IDD, are underlined by specific difficulties in facial emotion recognition, emotion identification in context and/or identification of vocal emotions.

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Key information

Age range

18 year–35 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

About this study

The study will be carried out in 3 steps :

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

Step 2 : All participants will undergo neuropsychological tests assessing attentional and oculomotor abilities (1 hour). During this time, the participant's family member 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 (both groups), will undergo the Raven Progressive Matrices (John and Raven 2003) to assess their intellectual abilities. They will then undergo an auditory 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 (both groups) will undergo :

  • - 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.
  • - the NSUCO oculomotor test (Maillet, 2015) : the orthoptist will evaluate the ability of the participant to carry out ocular saccades and movement pursuit.
  • - the Auditory attention task of the NEPSY-II battery (Korkman et al., 2012)
  • - 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 both groups will undergo the ACQUISS protocol.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

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

Treatment and study plan

ACQUISS protocol assessing emotional processing.

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.

Primary outcomes

  1. proportion of correct answers on the ACQUISS battery

    Time frame: Baseline

    proportion of correct answers in each of the 3 tasks

Secondary outcomes

  1. Proportion of correct answers on the Entangled lines test

    Time frame: Baseline

  2. Proportion of correct answers on the NSUCO test

    Time frame: Baseline

    Northeastern State University College of Optometry test.

  3. Proportion of correct answers on an auditory attentional task (NEPSY-II)

    Time frame: Baseline

  4. Proportion of correct signs barred on the TeddyBear task

    Time frame: Baseline

  5. Proportion of correct signs barred on the letter task

    Time frame: Baseline

  6. Score on the Agressivity questionnaire

    Time frame: Baseline

    Score on the Agressivity questionnaire ("Problematic behavior in group settings"), filled in by a caregiver. Minimum score = 6; Maximum score = 30. Higher scores suggest greater agressivity.

  7. Score on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist

    Time frame: Baseline

    Score on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist, filled in by a caregiver. Minimum = 0; Maximum = 174. Higher scores reflect more severe levels of challenging behavior.

Study contacts

Contact information is provided by the study sponsor or research team.

Marie-Noelle Babinet, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

+33437915380

Méline Devaluez, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

+33437915514

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Hôpital le Vinatier

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Assessing Emotional Processes in Adults With Intellectual Developmental Disorder Using the ACQUISS Battery

Acronym: EmoTDI

Important dates

Study start
2026
Primary completion
2028
Study completion
2028
First posted
Dec 24, 2025
Registry last updated
Apr 1, 2026

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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