Perseveration causes automatization of checking behavior in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Repeated checking in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with reduced meta-memory and behavioral automatization.
• Increased familiarity with checked stimuli is hypothesized to cause these effects.
• Defamiliarization strategies aim to disrupt automatization and mitigate negative meta-memory outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if repeated checking leads to automatization and negative meta-memory effects in OCD patients and healthy controls.
• To examine if defamiliarization of stimuli can cause de-automatization and attenuate meta-memory effects.
• To explore the clinical implications of these findings for OCD treatment.

Main Methods:

• Participants (OCD patients and healthy controls) performed a checking task with threat-irrelevant stimuli.
• Automatization was assessed using a dual-task reaction time (RT) paradigm during checking.
• Meta-memory was measured via self-report ratings before and after checking trials.
• A defamiliarization manipulation was introduced to modify perceptual characteristics of stimuli.

Main Results:

• Repeated checking resulted in automatization of checking behavior, as evidenced by RT measures, in both patient and control groups.
• Negative meta-memory effects (reduced confidence, vividness, detail) were observed following repeated checking.
• Defamiliarization successfully led to de-automatization, as measured by the RT task.
• However, defamiliarization did not attenuate the negative meta-memory effects associated with repeated checking.

Conclusions:

• Checking behavior in OCD can become automatized, leading to diminished meta-memory accuracy.
• While defamiliarization can disrupt automatization, it does not appear to alleviate the associated negative impacts on meta-memory.
• Further research is needed to develop effective interventions for compulsive checking in OCD.