Don't even think about checking: mental checking causes memory distrust.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Compulsive checking, a core symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), manifests in both physical and mental forms.
• While physical checking has been extensively researched, mental checking remains understudied.
• Prior research indicates physical checking impairs memory confidence and detail but not accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of repeated physical and mental checking on memory accuracy and meta-memory.
• To compare the impact of checking modality on memory performance.
• To test the hypothesis that modality-specific checking impairs modality-specific meta-memory.

Main Methods:

• Sixty-two undergraduate students participated in the study.
• Participants engaged in repeated physical or mental checking of a stove.
• Memory accuracy and meta-memory were assessed for both physical and mental checks.

Main Results:

• Checking in each modality led to significant decreases in meta-memory for that specific modality.
• No significant cross-modal effects were observed for meta-memory.
• Both physical and mental checking resulted in slight but significant declines in memory accuracy for the respective modality.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the hypothesis that checking behavior impairs meta-memory in a modality-specific manner.
• These results suggest that cognitive-behavioral models and treatments for OCD should consider the distinct impacts of physical and mental checking.
• Further research is warranted to explore the implications for understanding and treating compulsive checking behaviors.