OCD: The Effects of Doubt on Memory Confidence

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that affects 1% of the United States population, and is categorized by both obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. The most prevalent compulsive behavior is checking, which is an attempt to mitigate anxiety about a situation the person believes will be harmful if not addressed. Previous studies suggest a negative correlation between checking and metamemory (memory confidence, vividness and detail); however, there has been limited research on the effects of doubt, one of the main causes of checking behaviors, on metamemory. The current study used an online stove-checking task, first used by van den Hout and Kindt (2003), to investigate the influence of doubt on memory accuracy and metamemory in checking versus no checking groups as well as comparing people with high versus low levels of OCD symptomatology. Doubt was not shown to have any effect on metamemory, however, when comparing the low and high OCD groups, significant results were found for both accuracy and memory confidence. Checking had an effect on memory accuracy, but only for the high OCD symptomatology group. The high OCD group also had overall higher confidence levels. Some of these results contradict previous findings