Distrust of the senses and its association with obsessive-compulsive symptoms

Leading cognitive theories of OCD suggests that despite prevalent and persistent doubt, individuals with OCD do not have perceptual deficits. An alternate cognitive theory, the Seeking Proxies for Internal States hypothesis (SPIS), proposes that sensory distrust in OCD stems from actual deficits in accessing internal states. Consistent with the SPIS, previous research has found that high-OC individuals were less accurate than low-OC individuals in producing target levels of muscle tension in a biofeedback task and that OC symptoms were positively associated with reliance on an external proxy.

The current study aimed to replicate and extend the SPIS hypothesis in two experiments using a modified version of the biofeedback-aided muscle tensing task using grip strength as the sensory input and a distance perception task. We contrasted the performance of undergraduate students self-reporting high- and low-OC symptoms.

Overall, our findings failed to substantially support the SPIS hypothesis such that OC symptoms were not associated with deficient access to internal states of grip strength and distance perception or increased reliance on feedback.

As this study was conducted in a non-clinical sample, we were unable to generalise our findings to a clinical population.

Findings are commensurate with the wider OCD literature suggesting the absence of cognitive and perceptual deficits in OCD individuals.