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Attenuation of attention bias in obsessive–compulsive disorder

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Abstract

Cognitive theories of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) suggest that the disorder is characterized by an attention bias towards personally relevant threatening material. However, existing research on attention bias in OCD has yielded conflicting findings. One possibility that might account for the null findings is that attention bias may diminish over the course of the experiment. The present study tested this hypothesis using a visual dot-probe task with idiographic word selection. Results from our study confirmed that individuals with OC symptoms show an attention bias towards idiographically selected, threatening information in the first block of trials, and that the degree of this bias is correlated with the severity of OC symptoms. The temporal pattern of attention bias over the course of the experiment was consistent with our hypothesis. A comparison of early and late blocks of trials revealed an attenuation of attention bias in individuals with OC symptoms, potentially reflecting habituation to threatening information over the course of the experiment.

Section snippets

Attention bias in obsessive–compulsive disorder

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by unwanted, intrusive thoughts that cause anxiety (obsessions), and repetitive, ritualistic behaviors or thoughts intended to reduce the anxiety (compulsions). Cognitive models of OCD have emphasized a role of dysfunctional beliefs (Rachman, 1997, Salkovskis, 1985, Salkovskis, 1989) in the etiology and maintenance of the disorder. Other investigators have proposed that the characteristic repetitive obsessions and compulsions in OCD may be

Participants

Participants were undergraduate students who received partial course credit for their participation. To select these individuals, we first screened 400 individuals from a large pool of undergraduate psychology students using the Maudsley Obsessive–Compulsive Inventory (MOCI: Hodgson & Rachman, 1977). We used this measure to identify individuals in the high-OC group (n = 23) if their total score on the MOCI was above 12 or the low-OC group (n = 24) if their total score on the MOCI was below 8 (see

Participant characteristics

As expected, the high-OC and low-OC groups differed on our measure of obsessive–compulsive symptoms (i.e., MOCI) but not on demographic variables, state or trait anxiety (Table 1). The high-OC group had significantly higher BDI scores than did the low-OC group.

Probe detection data

In order to ensure that a comparable number of trials were considered across subjects, we based our analyses on the first 200 trials for all subjects. The first 20 trials for each participant were considered practice trials and hence

Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the temporal pattern of attention bias in individuals with OC symptoms. Results from our study suggest that attention bias towards threatening information diminished significantly after the first block of trials in individuals with OC symptoms, potentially reflecting habituation to threatening information over the course of the experiment. The control group of individuals low in OC symptoms showed neither an initial attention bias, nor a

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