Citation

Exner C, Zetsche U, Lincoln TM, Rief W. Behav. Ther. 2014; 45(2): 157-167.

Affiliation

University of Marburg.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.beth.2013.09.006

PMID

24491191

Abstract

A tendency to overestimate threat has been shown in individuals with OCD. We tested the hypothesis that this bias in judgment is related to difficulties in learning probabilistic associations between events. Thirty participants with OCD and 30 matched healthy controls completed a learning experiment involving 2 variants of a probabilistic classification learning task. In the neutral weather-prediction task, rainy and sunny weather had to be predicted. In the emotional task danger of an epidemic from virus infection had to be predicted (epidemic-prediction task). Participants with OCD were as able as controls to improve their prediction of neutral events across learning trials but scored significantly below healthy controls on the epidemic-prediction task. Lower performance on the emotional task variant was significantly related to a heightened tendency to overestimate threat. Biased information processing in OCD might thus hamper corrective experiences regarding the probability of threatening events.

Language: en