Subclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms, cognitive processes, school achievement, and intelligence-achievement relationship in adolescents

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine whether the general intelligence, cognitive processes, school achievement, and intelligence-achievement relationship of adolescents with subclinical levels of obsessive-compulsive symptoms differed from those of their normal counterparts. From an initial large pool of 14-year-old Bengali students in eighth grade, 110 girls and 100 boys were finally selected. The Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale and the Children's Obsessional Compulsive Inventory were used to exclude those with clinical levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and to identify those with subclinical levels of obsessive-compulsive symptoms as differentiated from the typically developed adolescents. The participants were administered the Standard Progressive Matrices for assessing general intelligence and Sumon's Attention Memory Module to assess memory-related variables and span of attention. School achievement was assessed from school records from the last two years. Intelligence-achievement relationship was obtained by computing the correlation between intelligence scores and achievement. The analyses revealed that those with subclinical symptoms had poorer cognitive processes, lower achievement and lower intelligence-achievement correlation than their healthy counterparts. Findings imply the need for detection of subclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms and early intervention of adolescent school students.