Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences (USWR), Tehran, Iran.
Department of Psychosomatic, Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Tehran, Iran.
Trends Psychiatry Psychother. 2022 Oct 4;44:e20210243. doi: 10.47626/2237-6089-2021-0243.
Neuropsychological findings in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are mainly clustered around the role of memory and executive functions. However, outcomes vary across different OCD populations. In addition, the extent to which each of these factors can distinguish patients with OCD (PwOCD) from healthy individuals remains uncertain and attracts great attention. The present study aims to investigate the above issues.
This was a cross-sectional study of 182 individuals (90 PwOCD and 92 matched healthy controls). After screening for inclusion and exclusion criteria, the participants were administered neuropsychological tests including, the Wechsler Memory Scale-III (WMS-III), the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and the Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT). Data were analyzed to test the study hypotheses using comparison of means and regression analysis methods.
The results showed that PwOCD had poorer performance than the control group in Immediate Memory, General Memory, and Working Memory and also according to response inhibition indexes. The results also showed that General Memory and Reaction Time2 from the SCWT index could be predictive variables for discriminating between PwOCD and controls.
The findings of this study support the prior assumptions that PwOCD would have impaired memory dimensions and response inhibition, but did not support worse set-shifting performance. We also present an initial model for the predictive role of these neuropsychological variables in discriminating OCD from healthy individuals and increasing diagnostic accuracy.
强迫症（OCD）患者的神经心理学研究结果主要集中在记忆和执行功能上。然而，不同 OCD 患者群体的结果存在差异。此外，这些因素中的每一个因素在多大程度上可以区分强迫症患者（PwOCD）和健康个体仍然不确定，这引起了极大的关注。本研究旨在探讨上述问题。
这是一项横断面研究，共纳入 182 名个体（90 名 PwOCD 和 92 名匹配的健康对照）。在筛选纳入和排除标准后，对参与者进行神经心理学测试，包括韦氏记忆量表第三版（WMS-III）、威斯康星卡片分类测试（WCST）和斯特鲁普色词测试（SCWT）。使用均值比较和回归分析方法分析数据以检验研究假设。
结果显示，PwOCD 在即刻记忆、总记忆和工作记忆方面的表现均差于对照组，并且在反应抑制指标方面也存在差异。结果还显示，SCWT 指数中的总记忆和反应时 2 可以作为区分 PwOCD 和对照组的预测变量。
本研究结果支持之前的假设，即 PwOCD 存在记忆维度和反应抑制受损，但不支持更差的转换性能。我们还提出了一个初步的模型，用于预测这些神经心理学变量在区分 OCD 和健康个体以及提高诊断准确性方面的作用。
