Brief Report: Local–Global Processing and Co-occurrence of Anxiety, Autistic and Obsessive–Compulsive Traits in a Non-clinical Sample

Increased local-to-global interference has been found in those with ASD, AD and OCD, and as such, may represent a transdiagnostic marker. As a first step to investigating this, we aimed to assess the overlap in traits of these disorders in a non-clinical sample, and whether local–global processing relates to the traits of the three conditions.

Participants (n = 149) completed questionnaires including the Autism Quotient (AQ), the Obsessive–Compulsive Inventory (OCI-R) and the Zung Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and an online version of the Navon task. Behavioural metrics of interference and precedence were extracted from the task and correlated with trait scores.

We found moderate to strong correlations between the total scores for ASD, anxiety and OCD. Most local–global processing indices did not relate to traits.

The study found evidence for an overlap in autism, anxiety and obsessive–compulsive traits in a non-clinical sample. However, local–global processing, as measured by the Navon task, did not appear to underpin symptomatology in the sample and could not be considered a transdiagnostic marker. Future research should investigate the value of alternate metrics.