Abstract
Recently, Toffolo, van den Hout, Hooge, Engelhard, and Cath (2013, 1, 103-109) showed that individuals with subclinical OCD (OC+) respond with more checking behavior to mildly uncertain situations than individuals with low OC tendencies (OC-). The present study aimed to replicate and extend these findings by measuring Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), and including the whole range of OC tendencies in a correlation analysis. Participants filled out the Obsessive Compulsive Inventory Revised and Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale and performed a visual search task. This task contained 50 search displays, in which participants indicated whether a target was "present" or "absent". Target-present trials were straight-forward, but target-absent trials were ambiguous, because participants had to rely on not having overlooked the target. Results revealed that target-absent trials induced more uncertainty than target-present trials. Furthermore, OC+ participants checked longer than OC- participants in target-absent but not target-present trials. This could not be explained by higher IU in OC+ participants. There were no differences in number of fixations in absent and present trials between the groups. Finally, when looking at the whole range of OC tendencies, there was a positive relation between OC tendencies and checking behavior. The findings (partly) replicated those of Toffolo et al. (2013) and add to their robustness.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 338-344 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders |
Volume | 3 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2014 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The work reported in this manuscript was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO; number 400-09-428 ).
Keywords
- Checking
- Eye tracking
- Intolerance of uncertainty
- OCD
- Uncertainty