Doubts about actions and flanker incongruity-related potentials and performance

Abstract

The brain networks that are involved in flanker incongruity and error processing are also consistently implicated in mental disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) that feature increased “Doubts about Actions” (DaA) scores. In the present study we investigated whether DaA scores, similar to what has been found for its positive correlate, OCD symptom severity scores, predict less interference from incompatible flankers during an Eriksen flanker task. Sixteen healthy right-handed female participants performed the flanker task and event-related potentials to the stimuli were recorded. DaA, but not other trait measures such as concern over mistakes and punishment sensitivity, related to less interference from incompatible flankers on performance and a smaller increase in N2 amplitude on incongruent compared to congruent flanker trials. This seems to point to a strategy or focused attention capacity to minimize flanker interference effects. The present results suggest that specific attentional capacities or strategies that appear to characterize disorders such as OCD, are related to disorder-associated traits in healthy populations as well.