Perceptual decision making and metacognition in relation to obsessive-compulsive traits

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Metacognition, the awareness and control of one's own cognition, is often impaired in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
• Previous studies indicated reduced metacognitive efficiency in OCD, but methodological limitations may have skewed results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To re-evaluate metacognitive efficiency in individuals with varying obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
• To investigate the impact of obsessive-compulsive tendencies on perceptual information processing and behavioral adaptation.

Main Methods:

• A two-alternative forced-choice task was administered to 161 healthy university students without providing feedback.
• Drift-diffusion modeling was employed to analyze decision-making processes.
• Post-error slowing was assessed to evaluate behavioral adaptation.

Main Results:

• Contrary to previous findings, higher obsessive-compulsive tendencies correlated with increased metacognitive efficiency.
• Drift-diffusion modeling revealed lower perceptual information integration efficiency and less cautious decision thresholds in those with higher obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
• Individuals with higher obsessive-compulsive tendencies showed limited post-error slowing and lower confidence levels after errors.

Conclusions:

• Higher obsessive-compulsive tendencies are associated with robust metacognitive capacity.
• Despite sufficient metacognitive capacity, individuals with higher obsessive-compulsive tendencies exhibit impaired utilization of this information for adaptive behavior and error correction.