Abstract
Background and Objectives
The habit formation model of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) suggests that overreliance on stimulus-driven behaviors leads to repetitive compulsive rituals. Failure in task control, which leads to the stimulus-driven behaviors overriding the goal-driven system, could explain the mechanisms involved in this process.
Methods
Patients with OCD and non-psychiatric controls completed the affordance task to understand the role of task control in maintaining compulsive behaviors. In the affordance task, participants are required to respond to a stimulus with one hand, while the stimulus on screen triggers a motor activation in either the congruent (same) or incongruent (other) hand. The affordance effect (accuracy for incongruent minus congruent trials) measures task control—the ability to suppress irrelevant, stimulus-driven, behaviors.
Results
The affordance effect was larger in the OCD group, indicating a deficit in task control in those patients. Furthermore, a binary logistic regression analysis, using the affordances effect as a predictor and group as the outcome variable, revealed that the affordance effect correctly classified about 65% of the individuals with OCD compared to the non-psychiatric controls. The correlation between the affordance effect and OCD symptom-severity was not significant.
Limitations
Handedness was assessed through self-report and OCD symptoms were mild–moderate.
Conclusions
These findings strengthen the notion that task control deficits might account for the imbalance between the goal-directed and habit formation systems and that this deficit might be a risk factor for OCD but does not account for symptom-severity.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Jonathan Huppert of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for his helpful and insightful suggestions on an earlier draft of this.
Funding
This study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 1341/18).
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Hadar Naftalovich, Dan Sacks, Eldad Keha, and Eyal Kalanthroff declare that have no conflict of interest.
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Naftalovich, H., Sacks, D., Keha, E. et al. Task Control in the Affordance Task as the Underlying Mechanism for the Imbalance Between the Goal-Directed and Habit Formation Systems in Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder. Cogn Ther Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-024-10469-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-024-10469-x