My Publications | Pre-prints

  • Lutz, M. C., Kok, R., van Lier, P., Franken, I. H., & Buil, M. (2023, June 6). Developmental trajectory of flanker performance and its link to problem behavior in 7-to 12-year-old children. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fj62k
  • Miranda C. Lutz, Rianne Kok, Ilse Verveer,  Marcelo Malbec De Vidts, Susanne Koot, Pol van Lier & Ingmar Franken (2021). Diminished error-related negativity and error positivity in children and adults with externalizing problems and disorders - Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 46 (6), E615-E627.  doi: 10.1503/jpn.200031
  • Miranda C. Lutz, Rianne Kok & Ingmar Franken (2021). Event-related potential (ERP) measures of error processing as biomarkers of externalizing disorders. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 166, 151-159. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2021.06.002
  • Kim de Jong, Judith M. Colijn, Roisin A. V. Gallagher, Alexandra S. Reshetnikova, Marya Heij & Miranda C. Lutz (2021). Using progress feedback to improve outcomes and reduce drop-out, treatment duration, and deterioration. Clinical Psychology Review, 85. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2021.102002

Current Collaborations / Active Projects

Steady State EEG. With Drs. Asmina Aslanidou

OSF: https://osf.io/nq745/ The ability to detect threats in ever-changing environments is of crucial importance to living organisms. Successful threat detection, on the one hand can help escape dangerous encounters and on the other hand avoid unnecessary fear. Differential fear conditioning paradigms have been extensively used to study threat identification, by pairing one stimulus CS+) with an aversive event such as a loud noise or an electric shock (US) signaling threat, while a second stimulus is never paired (CS-) signaling safety. Among other measures, steady-state visual evoked potentials or fields (ssVEP/Fs) have often been used as a method to capture this difference. With ssVEP/Fs the temporal frequency of an externally flickering stimulus can cause frequency locked potentials in EEG/MEG (Regan, 1989). These frequency locked potentials can be tracked and thus allow us to follow the dynamic changes of visuocortical processing due to learning (Wieser et al., 2016). The amplitude of ssVEP/Fs is modulated not only by low order physical characteristics such as colour and shape but also by cognitive processes such as selective attention (McTeague et al., 2015). The great temporal resolution of EEG/MEG as well as the excellent signal-to-noise ratio constitute ssVEP/Fs a promising method for capturing early cortical bias formation such as the difference between a threat and safety signals. Effect sizes for other widely used methods that measure conditioned responses, such as Heart Rate and Skin Conductance Response, have already been suggested (Ojala & Bach, 2020). Although ssVEPs have been used to capture this difference in differential conditioning paradigms for more than a decade, there is no meta-analytic evidence for its success. Therefore, with this study we plan to aggregate evidence from studies using ssVEP/Fs in differential fear conditioning paradigms and explore whether their use is justified.

Validation of Assessment for Signal Clients. With Kim de Jong, PhD

Clinical support tools such as the Outcome Questionnaire Assessment for Signal Clients (OQASC) can help therapists identify reasons for a client´s lack of progress during psychotherapy. The OQ-ASC questionnaire assesses four domains that moderate treatment outcomes: therapeutic alliance, social support, motivation, and life events. The utility and usefulness of the OQ-ASC is dependent on its psychometric qualities. This study aims to investigate the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the OQ-ASC. Combining three independent samples of Dutch outpatients, 318 participants were included in the analysis. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed an acceptable fit for the four factors that were originally proposed for this questionnaire. The internal consistency was good for all scales. The convergent and divergent validity was good for the Therapeutic Alliance, Social Support, and Life Events scales, but was unsatisfactory for the Motivation subscale. The OQASC scales were able to distinguish between clients who were on track and not on track for recovery, except for the Motivation subscale. Overall, the OQ-ASC can be a useful tool to assess reasons for potential stagnations in treatment progress, and as such, can be a valuable addition to routine outcome monitoring measures used in the Netherlands.

Task performance and cognitive control. With Peter Clayson, PhD

Empirical paper (pre-registration upon request). Forced choice response tasks are often used to investigate behavioral and neurophysiological indices of performance monitoring. The modal approach for investigating these indices is to examine interindividual differences in average scores of a single ERP component, and studies that include neurophysiological data rarely use individual-trial ERP data and target specific relationships between behavior and neurophysiology. Therefore, the present study will examine interindividual and intraindividual differences in the trial-by-trial relationship between behavioral measurements (response time, accuracy) and neurophysiology (the stimulus-locked conflict N2 and P3 and the response-locked error-related negativity [ERN] and post-error positivity [Pe] components of the ERP) recorded during a flanker task to determine the trial-by-trial correspondence between behavioral and neurophysiological instantiations of performance monitoring.

Meta-Analysis on efficacy of blended CBT for anxiety and depression. With Drs. Sara Jakobsson Månsson

The goal of the meta-analysis is to determine the effectiveness of bCBT and to evaluate whether it is additive or a possible replacement of F2F sessions. I am involved in advising Sara on the methodology and statistics of the meta-analysis, help out with rating risk of bias assessment. This review article will be used in Sara's PhD dissertation.

Event-related oscillations in substance use addiction. With Vaughn Steele, PhD.

Diminished brain activity during error processing has been previously observed in patients with substance use disorder. The current study will investigate whether theta/beta oscillations are also affected in patients with SUD.

Absitence during SUD treatment: A meta-analysis. With Michiel Boog, PhD

Central question in this meta-analysis: Is abstinence of substances during SUD treatment related to more favourable treatment outcomes than non-abstinence? I advise Michiel in the methodology and statistics of this meta-analysis, and help out with rating risk of bias assessment.

Previous Collaborations / Completed Projects

Infant behavioral inhibition, social anxiety and error monitoring. With Daniel Pine, MD, NIMH.

OSF: https://osf.io/jkpsx In this prospective longitudinal study, we examine the association between infant behavioral inhibition (measured at 14 month), later social anxiety (measured at age 29) and error processing (measured with a social flanker task). The social flanker task, where there is one condition in which participants are observed by a peer, will be performed in a MRI-scanner, allowing us to investigate where in the anterior cingulate cortex activity most or least evident. For a preview of this unpublished and not peer-reviewed manuscript, please see my PhD dissertation.

Reducing Externalizing Problem Behavior in Youth. With Michelle Achterberg, PhD & Lysanne te Brinke, PhD.

Proposal. osf.io/n9q6g. Cancelled project. During the covid-19 crisis, internalizing problems of adolescents have received a lot of attention, yet research shows that youths themselves and society as a whole also experience an increased burden of externalizing problems (i.e., misbehavior such as drug use and aggression. Therefore, effective policy and interventions to deal with these problems are needed. Currently, policy and intervention programs aimed to influence adolescent externalizing behaviors often fail because they (1) do not honor adolescents’ need for autonomy, status and respect, and (2) do not include adolescents in the design process. To reduce externalizing problem behavior in youth, we want to utilize a co-creation design including several stakeholders. We will invite 20 participants to the co-creation process, divided over four taskforces (see figure at on OSF): 1) 16-18-year-old adolescents; 2) policy makers; 3) policy executors such as youth workers, teachers, and community officers; and 4) health care professionals such as school psychologists and child psychiatrists. We will adapt the suggestions of Stichting Alexander, by including the following four steps: inform, create, evaluate and present.