The impact of cognitive behavioral therapy on metacognition and recognition memory in people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

It was established that individuals with OCD experience cognitive effects associated with the disease. However, which cognitive processes and how this effect occurs is still unclear since studies investigating memory in OCD are controversial. Recent studies suggested that metacognitive processes differ in OCD compared to healthy controls and may be associated with both clinical symptoms and cognitive impact of the disease. Moreover, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is reported that it is one of the most effective behavioral treatment methods and causes improvement in negative metacognitive processes seen in OCD. For this goal, 46 individuals diagnosed with OCD and 50 healthy controls were compared on JOL judgments, JOL accuracy, and recognition memory scores using familiar and unfamiliar neutral stimuli (word-scene photo pairs). Participants were also given BDI, BAI, MOCI, Y-BOCS(only for clinical group), SCID-V(only for control group). Additionally, it is sought to explore the potential impact of CBT on these cognitive areas. Ten sessions of CBT were applied to OCD patients; their clinical scores, memory, and metacognition scores were acquired following CBT. It was expected that individuals with OCD would have lower JOL judgments, JOL accuracy, and recognition performance scores. Also, it was hypothesized that an increase in these scores would be observed following CBT. It was observed that when non-disease-related stimuli were presented, OCD patients did not encounter a memory problem but gave lower JOL judgments and JOL accuracy scores. After the therapy sessions, participants' JOL judgments and JOL accuracy scores increased significantly, but memory scores did not change.