OCD and Cognitive Illusions

Dèttore, Davide; O’Connor, Kieron

doi:10.1007/s10608-012-9440-0

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Most studies on OD effects have relied only on causal or efficacy ratings at test as a measure of causal illusion. Indeed, studies that have examined predictions made during training have not always found strong evidence for OD effects, revealing potentially important discrepancies between the decision processes made during training and judgments of causality assessed at the end of training (e.g., Blanco & Matute, 2015; Dèttore & O’Connor, 2013; Waldmann, 2001). Some authors have argued that the dissociation between prediction and causal judgments occurs because these measures are incomparable (Vadillo et al, 2011); predictions during training are typically binary and summed across the training procedure (proportion of “yes” responses to the question Will the patient recover?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the divide between causal illusions in the laboratory and the real world: the effects of outcome density with a variable continuous outcome

2019

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Illusory causation refers to a consistent error in human learning in which the learner develops a false belief that two unrelated events are causally associated. Laboratory studies usually demonstrate illusory causation by presenting two events—a cue (e.g., drug treatment) and a discrete outcome (e.g., patient has recovered from illness)—probabilistically across many trials such that the presence of the cue does not alter the probability of the outcome. Illusory causation in these studies is further augmented when the base rate of the outcome is high, a characteristic known as the outcome density effect. Illusory causation and the outcome density effect provide laboratory models of false beliefs that emerge in everyday life. However, unlike laboratory research, the real-world beliefs to which illusory causation is most applicable (e.g., ineffective health therapies) often involve consequences that are not readily classified in a discrete or binary manner. This study used a causal learning task framed as a medical trial to investigate whether similar outcome density effects emerged when using continuous outcomes. Across two experiments, participants observed outcomes that were either likely to be relatively low (low outcome density) or likely to be relatively high (high outcome density) along a numerical scale from 0 (no health improvement) to 100 (full recovery). In Experiment 1, a bimodal distribution of outcome magnitudes, incorporating variance around a high and low modal value, produced illusory causation and outcome density effects equivalent to a condition with two fixed outcome values. In Experiment 2, the outcome density effect was evident when using unimodal skewed distributions of outcomes that contained more ambiguous values around the midpoint of the scale. Together, these findings provide empirical support for the relevance of the outcome density bias to real-world situations in which outcomes are not binary but occur to differing degrees. This has implications for the way in which we apply our understanding of causal illusions in the laboratory to the development of false beliefs in everyday life.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-018-0149-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the divide between causal illusions in the laboratory and the real world: the effects of outcome density with a variable continuous outcome

2019

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“…Most importantly, the preventive illusion turns out to be of interest for clinical and abnormal psychology: Whereas generative illusions have been associated to optimistic and adaptive biases ( Taylor & Brown, 1988 ), preventive illusions could be instead related to maladaptive behaviors. For instance, patients suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are known to develop strange superstitious habits that often resemble preventive illusions of control (e.g., Dèttore, & O’Connor, 2013 ; Reuven-Magril, Dar, & Liberman, 2008 ; Zebb & Moore, 2003 ). Typically, the patient engages in a repetitive behavioral pattern aimed at preventing catastrophic events from happening, despite this behavior being evidently useless.…”

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confidence: 99%

Exploring the Factors That Encourage the Illusions of Control

Blanco

Matute

2015

Experimental Psychology

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Most previous research on illusions of control focused on generative scenarios, in which participants’ actions aim to produce a desired outcome. By contrast, the illusions that may appear in preventive scenarios, in which actions aim to prevent an undesired outcome before it occurs, are less known. In this experiment, we studied two variables that modulate generative illusions of control, the probability with which the action takes place, P(A), and the probability of the outcome, P(O), in two different scenarios: generative and preventive. We found that P(O) affects the illusion in symmetrical, opposite directions in each scenario, while P(A) is positively related to the magnitude of the illusion. Our conclusion is that, in what concerns the illusions of control, the occurrence of a desired outcome is equivalent to the nonoccurrence of an undesired outcome, which explains why the P(O) effect is reversed depending on the scenario.

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“…OCD is commonly comorbid with sleep difficulties, depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and personality disorders (APA, 2013). Evidence also suggests that individuals with OCD may exhibit deficits in cognitive functioning (Dettore & O'Connor, 2013;Shin, Lee, Kim & Kwon, 2014), which likely contributes to the difficulties in day-to-day functioning. Thus, it is not surprising that the World Health Organization (WHO;…”

Section: Decision Making In Ocd V Dedicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining components of decision making in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Lane¹

2023

Preprint

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The purpose of this study was to examine decision making in individuals with OCD as compared to healthy controls. To the author's knowledge, this was the first study to evaluate decision making in OCD using multiple neuropsychological measures to assess proposed components of the construct, including ambiguity, impulsivity, risk perception, and organizational strategies. It was also believed to be the first study to compare subjective and objective decision making in OCD. Subjective decision making showed poor convergent validity with the three objective measures, as only self-reported indecision was significantly different between groups. Performance on a memory task, as a proxy for organizational strategies, indicated differences between groups on strategic learning and the effect of interference. Although the presence of decision making deficits remains inconclusive, this study provided support for the conclusion that individuals with OCD have perceived difficulty with decision making, but not necessarily objective deficits. Treatment implications are discussed.

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OCD and Cognitive Illusions

Cited by 8 publications

References 91 publications

Bridging the divide between causal illusions in the laboratory and the real world: the effects of outcome density with a variable continuous outcome

Bridging the divide between causal illusions in the laboratory and the real world: the effects of outcome density with a variable continuous outcome

Exploring the Factors That Encourage the Illusions of Control

Examining components of decision making in obsessive-compulsive disorder

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