Conditional-Associative Learning in Eating Disorders: A Comparison With OCD

Abstract

The acquisition of conditional associations using neutral and individually threatening verbal stimuli was assessed in 16 females with anorexia nervosa (AN), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bulimia nervosa and normal controls, respectively. Groups did not differ in terms of age, sex, intelligence, depression, verbal memory and verbal fluency measures. Patients and controls were widely comparable on tests assessing neuropsychological functioning. In the conditional-associative learning (CAL)-task only anorectic and OCD-patients displayed an impaired performance with neutral material but not with individually threatening material. Such a deficit was not evident in bulimics or in normal controls. These findings support the assumptions from functional neuroimaging investigations in AN and OCD and provide evidence that obsessive and compulsive behavior could have its origin within common neurobiological dysfunctions. The CAL possibly serves as a functional correlate of a neurophysiological dysfunction in obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders.

Threat processing in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Evidence from a modified negative priming task

“…However, OCs did not differ from the NACs when processing neutral and idiographic positive stimuli, suggesting OCs are capable of learning the contingency between the displays. Previous research on learning involving neutral and threat information in individuals with OCD compared to non-anxious individuals has shown OC's experience deficits in learning neutral stimuli but not threat stimuli (Leplow et al, 2002;Murphy et al, 2004). The authors of these two studies attribute this finding to an attentional bias that compensates for the general learning deficit.…”

“…In the conditional associative learning studies by Leplow et al, (2002) and Murphy et al (2004) mentioned above, the individuals with OCD did not exhibit the same learning deficit when making associations between idiographically-selected threatening material and geometric shapes. Because any information processing bias in OCD is likely to be present for OCD-related information, and specifically, personally-relevant threat information, we were most interested in functioning involving this type of material.…”

“…These findings would have implications for attention and learning in OCD. For example, individuals with OCD make more errors than non-anxious individuals when learning associations between neutral words and geometric shapes (Leplow, Murphy, & Nutzinger, 2002;Murphy, Nutzinger, Paul, & Leplow, 2004). A learning deficit in OCD has also been found in other tasks (e.g., Veale, Sahakian, Owens, & Marks, 1996;Bohne et al, 2005), although some studies have found they experience no deficit in their ability to learn (e.g., Rauch et al, 1997).…”

An Examination of the Ravello Profile — A Neuropsychological Test Battery for Anorexia Nervosa

“…The present meta-analysis shows a medium positive effect size on this test, indicating that patients with AN take significantly longer than the control group to complete this task. TMT switching is considered to be a test of divided attention Szmukler et al (1992) 6.7 0.93 (-0.00,1.85) Thompson (1993) 3.7 0.46 (0.04,0.89) Kingston et al (1996) 15.0 0.44 (-0.06,0.93) Mathias & Kent (1998) 11.8 0.01 (-0.68,0.71) Murphy et al (2004) 6.4 0.85 (0.36,1.34) Tchanturia et al (2004a) 11.9 0.85 (0.35,1.34) Tchanturia et al (2004b) 11 and in particular cognitive flexibility (Kortte, Horner, & Windham, 2002). A recent review has demonstrated a consistent set-shifting deficit in patients with eating disorders (Roberts et al, 2007), and it is possible that the longer time taken to complete the TMT test in the AN group is a reflection of this deficit.…”

“…Two studies (Hatch et al, 2010;Murphy, Nutzinger, Paul, & Leplow, 2004) administered the category condition of the VFT, and only one study (Murphy et al, 2004) employed the switching condition of the test. The results from these conditions were not meta-analysed.…”