Research Center for Behavioral Economics, FOM Hochschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Scand J Psychol. 2013 Oct;54(5):393-400. doi: 10.1111/sjop.12066. Epub 2013 Jul 10.
The nature of cognitive deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by contradictory findings in terms of specific neuropsychological deficits. Selective impairments have been suggested to involve visuospatial memory, set shifting, decision-making and response inhibition. The aim of this study was to investigate cognitive deficits in decision-making and executive functioning in OCD. It was hypothesized that the OCD patients would be less accurate in their responses compared to the healthy controls in rational decision-making on a version of the Cambridge gambling task (CGT) and on the color-word interference test and on a version of the Tower of Hanoi test (tower test) of executive functioning. Thirteen participants with OCD were compared to a group of healthy controls (n = 13) matched for age, gender, education and verbal IQ. Results revealed significant differences between the OCD group and the healthy control group on quality of decision-making on the CGT and for achievement score on the tower test. On these two tasks the OCD group performed worse than the healthy control group. The symptom-dimension analysis revealed performance differences where safety checking patients were impaired on the tower test compared to contamination patients. Results are discussed in the framework of cognition and emotion processing and findings implicate that OCD models should address, specifically, the interaction between cognition and emotion. Here the emotional disruption hypothesis is forwarded to account for the dysfunctional behaviors in OCD. Further implications regarding methodological and inhibitory factors affecting cognitive information processing are highlighted.
强迫症（OCD）患者的认知缺陷的本质特征是在特定的神经心理学缺陷方面存在矛盾的发现。有人提出，选择性损伤可能涉及视空间记忆、定势转移、决策和反应抑制。本研究旨在探讨 OCD 患者在决策和执行功能方面的认知缺陷。假设 OCD 患者在理性决策方面的剑桥赌博任务（CGT）的一个版本、颜色-词语干扰测试以及执行功能的一个版本（塔测试）的反应准确性会低于健康对照组。将 13 名 OCD 患者与年龄、性别、教育和言语智商相匹配的健康对照组（n = 13）进行比较。结果显示，在 CGT 的决策质量和塔测试的完成分数上，OCD 组与健康对照组之间存在显著差异。在这两个任务中，OCD 组的表现都比健康对照组差。症状维度分析显示，在塔测试中，安全检查患者的表现逊于污染患者。研究结果在认知和情绪处理的框架内进行了讨论，并发现 OCD 模型应特别解决认知和情绪之间的相互作用。在此提出情绪干扰假说来解释 OCD 中的功能失调行为。还强调了影响认知信息处理的方法学和抑制因素的进一步影响。
