Shorter communicationAttenuation of attention bias in obsessive–compulsive disorder
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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