EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS, PROSPECTIVE MEMORY and RETRIEVAL – CONTRIBUTION of EXPERIMENTAL COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY to the UNDERSTANDING of OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
Evidence was found supporting the impaired shifting and inhibition components of the executive system and intact short-term memory performance in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). According to our view beside the executive deficit, the prospective memory (PM) is also impaired in OCD. The patients commit significantly more errors and slow down in the event-based PM tasks than the matched control subjects due probably to an overactivity of the PM system. For the cognitive profile of OCD the overactivated mechanism seems essential in conflict detection, monitoring and inhibition of competing information. It has been demonstrated that the retrieval induced forgetting (RIF) is a long term effect, it persists after a full period of sleep if rehearsal is reduced or did not occur. OCD patients do not show the RIF effect probably due to their dysfunction of conflict detection processes. This effect was not affected by the level of anxiety, working, or short term memory capacity. Our data support the executive system deficit in OCD and we argue that this impairment could contribute to the overactivity and cancellation deficits observed in the PM system and to the altered recall of episodic memories.
Kutatási beszámoló
Demeter Gyula egyetemi tanársegéd, BME TTK Kognitív Tudományi Tanszék,
2012.08.31.