Obsessiveâ€“compulsive disorder patients have a reduced sense of control on the illusion of control task

Claire M Gillan,Alice M S Durieux,Naomi A Fineberg,Trevor W Robbins,Sharon Morein-Zamir,Barbara J Sahakian

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00204

Abstract

There is disagreement regarding the role of perceived control in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study used a traditional illusion of control paradigm (Alloy and Abramson, 1979) to empirically test control estimation in OCD. Twenty-six OCD patients and 26 matched comparison subjects completed an illusion of control task wherein their goal was to attempt to exert control over a light bulb. The density of reinforcement (high, low) and the valence of trials (gain, loss) were experimentally manipulated within subjects. Unbeknownst to participants, the illumination of the light bulb was predetermined and irrespective of their behavior. OCD patients exhibited lower estimates of control compared with healthy comparison subjects. There were no interactions between group and outcome density or group and valence. We found that OCD patients endorse lower estimates of control than comparison subjects. This finding highlights a potential role for contingency learning in the disorder.

Highlights

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a condition in which patients suffer from distressing obsessive thoughts and feel compelled to perform actions
Using an illusion of control procedure that has been extensively studied in the literature (Alloy and Abramson, 1979), we observed that OCD patients report lower estimations of control than healthy comparison subjects
Unlike the depressive realism phenomenon, lower estimates in the OCD group were not confined to the high outcome density blocks; rather OCD patients’ control estimates were consistently lower than comparison subjects regardless of density or valence

Summary

Introduction

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a condition in which patients suffer from distressing obsessive thoughts (e.g., that harm will come to a loved one) and feel compelled to perform actions (e.g., repeatedly counting or checking; APA, 2013). Reuven-Magril et al (2008) employed a control estimation task in which participants attempted to decrease the duration that neutral and aversive images were displayed on the screen by using a sequence of button-presses. Participants were unaware that there was no relationship between their button-press patterns and the duration that the image was presented. They found that obsessive–compulsive symptoms were related to an increased self-reported sense of control over the duration of the image and a decrease in key press variability. As the task employed in this study was novel, we sought to test if this effect was replicable using a task that conforms to the previous (and vast) literature on the illusion of control phenomenon

Methods

Results

Conclusion