Investigation of Attentional Bias in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with and without Depression in Visual Search

Sharon Morein-Zamir,Martina Papmeyer,Naomi A Fineberg,Trevor W Robbins,Barbara J Sahakian,Alice Durieux,Leonardo Fontenelle

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080118

Abstract

Whether Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is associated with an increased attentional bias to emotive stimuli remains controversial. Additionally, it is unclear whether comorbid depression modulates abnormal emotional processing in OCD. This study examined attentional bias to OC-relevant scenes using a visual search task. Controls, non-depressed and depressed OCD patients searched for their personally selected positive images amongst their negative distractors, and vice versa. Whilst the OCD groups were slower than healthy individuals in rating the images, there were no group differences in the magnitude of negative bias to concern-related scenes. A second experiment employing a common set of images replicated the results on an additional sample of OCD patients. Although there was a larger bias to negative OC-related images without pre-exposure overall, no group differences in attentional bias were observed. However, OCD patients subsequently rated the images more slowly and more negatively, again suggesting post-attentional processing abnormalities. The results argue against a robust attentional bias in OCD patients, regardless of their depression status and speak to generalized difficulties disengaging from negative valence stimuli. Rather, post-attentional processing abnormalities may account for differences in emotional processing in OCD.

Highlights

Abnormal affective processing is central to both anxiety and depressive disorders [1,2,3]
Post-hoc Tukey comparisons confirmed that both obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) groups scored higher than controls on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS), Padua and trait anxiety
Despite markedly different clinical characteristics, performance in the search and rating tasks was similar between the two OCD groups, with only a general slowing noted in the depressed group

Summary

Introduction

Abnormal affective processing is central to both anxiety and depressive disorders [1,2,3]. Relative to controls, in the emotional Stroop task, anxiety patients were slower color naming words depicting threat than neutral content [8]. Such patients show attentional bias toward mood-congruent and concern-related material over and above the levels displayed by normal volunteers [9], as in the dot-probe task when responding to targets that follow threat rather than neutral cues [10]. Cognitive theories suggest obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) should feature abnormal attentional processing towards concern-related material [11,12]. Processing biases in OCD would be expected to contribute to the development and maintenance of intrusive obsessive thoughts.

Methods

Results

Conclusion