Emotional induced attentional blink in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Although an attentional bias for threat is implicated in anxiety disorders, such a bias has not been consistently observed in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This inconsistency is partially due to a paucity of studies employing robust attentional tasks. The emotional attentional blink (EAB), a phenomenon in which the brief appearance of a task-irrelevant, emotionally arousing image captures attention to such an extent that target stimuli cannot be detected, have increasing been employed as more robust tasks of attentional biases.

In the present study, patients with OCD (n = 23) and controls (n = 24) completed an EAB paradigm that required searching for a target embedded within a series of rapidly presented images. Critically, a fear, disgust, positive, or neutral distracter image appeared 200 ms or 800 ms before the target (i.e., lag 2 and lag 8).

Although accuracy was significantly reduced for control participants when emotionally arousing images served as distractors compare to neutral images at lag 2 (but not at lag 8), no statistically significant differences in accuracy were observed between emotionally arousing images and neutral images among those with OCD. Subsequent analysis did show that OCD symptoms across all participants was significantly correlated with difficulty disengaging from emotionally arousing, but not neutral, images.

Relatively small sample size and absence of personally-relevant threatening stimuli.

The reduced attentional capture by emotionally arousing images in OCD, relative to neutral images neutral, may suggest inefficient engagement and disengagement of attentional networks.