Investigating cognitive and metacognitive processes in people with obsessive compulsive disorder: The role of cognitive behavioral therapy on the episodic memory & prospective metamemory

While previous studies proposed that individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) experience episodic memory problems, recent studies supported that this deficit was perceptual rather than actual. It was thought that metacognitive processes in OCD differ from controls and shown that people with OCD have lower confidence for their memory. Moreover, it was suggested that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions can be effective in treating OCD and these interventions may help regulate metacognitive strategies for OCD have problems with. Therefore, the first aim of the current study is to investigate episodic memory performance (recognition), JOL judgments, and accuracy in patients with OCD compared to healthy controls. The second aim is to investigate the effect of CBT on these cognitive processes in OCD. It was hypothesized that OCD patients would have lower JOL confidence, JOL accuracy, and poorer recognition performance. It was expected to observe improvement in these processes after CBT sessions. For that purpose, participants diagnosed with OCD and HCs matching with the OCD group in terms of age and education were compared on performances of JOL judgments and recognition memory using episodic memory task involving neutral familiar and unfamiliar word-human face pairs. Participants were scanned through Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-V and given several clinical questionnaires. OCD patients undergone 10 CBT sessions; their memory, metamemory and clinical scores were obtained after the CBT. A significant difference was established between groups for JOL judgments before CBT, not for the recognition performance. After CBT, an improvement was observed in OCD patients' cognitive processes.