Can Thought-Action Fusion Be Induced and Alleviated?

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effects of the induction of thought-action fusion (TAF) on appraisal process, by using an enhanced paradigm which integrates the favourable aspects of Sentence Completion Task (SCT) with Obsessive-Compulsive (OC)-like perseverative reasoning (PR) task. The study also aims to evaluate the effect of psychoeducation (PE) on alleviating the level of TAF-Induction experience. A total of three groups were formed. The first group with high OC traits (47 participants), a second with low OC traits (70 participants) were the two analogue groups; and a third group composed of patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) (52 participants) were used. For induction of TAF, all participants were asked to construct a causal link between two OC-like feared situations in a perseverative fashion. Later, for alleviation, while half of the participants read psychoeducational information about TAF, the remaining half read information about stress. Appraisal processes regarding TAF-Likelihood and TAF-Morality components were assessed before and after enhanced paradigm, and after PE. With the current methodology, the likelihood component of TAF could be obtained by the induction of experience. PE about TAF appeared to be effective only on TAF-likelihood component when compared to TAF-morality component. Contrary to the expectations, there was no difference between OCD group and the two analogue groups on TAF-Likelihood scores. In addition, also unexpectedly, participants in the analogue group having high OC traits had significantly higher scores on TAF-Morality compared to OCD group. Clinical implications are discussed in the light of literature.