Effectiveness of the serious game ‘You & I’ in changing mentalizing abilities of adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities: a parallel superiority randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Background Persons with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities generally show dysfunctions in mentalization and stress regulation, resulting in problematic social relationships and personal distress. Intervention programs may improve mentalizing abilities. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the serious game ‘You & I’ in changing mentalizing abilities and stress regulation in adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. Methods A two-arm, parallel, superiority randomized controlled trial will be used with 172 adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental group to play the serious game ‘You & I’ or a waitlist control group. Participants will be assessed at baseline, post intervention (5 weeks after baseline), and follow-up (6–8 weeks after post intervention). They also will fill in questionnaires for personal factors, personal development, personal well-being, social validity, autism spectrum quotient (demographic variables), mentalizing abilities (primary outcome measure), and stress regulation (secondary outcome measure). Discussion The serious game ‘You & I’ aims to improve mentalizing abilities in adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities, which is expected to lead to improved regulation of stress in social relationships. The study’s unique feature is the use of a serious game to improve mentalizing abilities. If the intervention is effective, the serious game can be implemented on a broad scale in Dutch care organizations for people with intellectual disabilities as an effective preventive tool to improve mentalizing abilities. Trial registration Netherlands Trial Register, NTR7418 . Registered on 2 August 2018. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13063-019-3608-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A Critical Evaluation of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

“…The aim of the present research is to replicate and extend previous findings from Spitzer and colleagues, while also comprehensively presenting our concerns regarding the measure. A critical reexamination and discussion of the RFQ-8 appears to be of particular importance given that researchers are increasingly adopting the measure for primary investigations of the mentalizing construct (e.g., Agostini et al, 2019;Badoud et al, 2018;Berthelot et al, 2019;Brugnera et al, 2020;Carlone & Milan, 2020;Cosenza et al, 2019;de Meulemeester et al, 2017de Meulemeester et al, , 2018Euler et al, 2019;Gambin et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2020;Li et al, 2020;Macfie et al, 2020;Morosan et al, 2019Morosan et al, , 2020Perroud et al, 2017;Sacchetti et al, 2019;Salaminios et al, 2020;Scandurra et al, 2020) or as an outcome measure for evaluating psychotherapy effectiveness (e.g., Arnfred et al, 2017;Derks et al, 2019).…”

Effectiveness of the mentalisation‐based serious game ‘You & I’ for adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities: A randomised controlled trial

“…The study was registered in the Netherlands Trial Register (NTR7418) and approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the University Medical Center Amsterdam, the Netherlands (METc VUmc 2018.007, NL60353.029.17). For the details of the study protocol, see Derks et al (2019). impairments for whom computer operation is not possible were excluded.…”

The co-creation design process of ‘You & I’: a serious game to support mentalizing and stress-regulating abilities in adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities

“…dosing), and offered repetition of the dimensions of mentalization (i.e. organisation; Derks et al 2019).…”

“…Although the new design model is based on what is theoretically advised as a guideline for effective interventions and game elements to simulate learning and performance and to keep players involved and motivated, validating the design model as effective was beyond the scope of this work. The effectiveness of the serious game 'You & I' will be examined (for more details on the research design, see Derks et al 2019) and reported in later work.…”