MEMORY AND CONFIDENCE IN MEMORY JUDGMENTS AMONG INDIVIDUALS WITH OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND NONCLINICAL CONTROLS

The present study investigated episodic memory functioning in: (1) obs essive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients with primarily checking symp toms (i.e. checkers); (2) OCD patients without checking symptoms (i.e. non-checkers); and (3) non-clinical control participants. On a measur e of recall, all groups were statistically equivalent with respect to the proportion of words correctly recalled. Using a recognition measur e, checkers were unimpaired in episodic memory,as compared to non-chec kers and non-clinical controls. However, relative to the other groups, patients with checking symptoms showed decreased confidence in their correct and incorrect recognition memory judgments, according to their item-by-item self-report confidence ratings. When checkers correctly identified previously seen words, they were also slower to respond tha n were the other groups, supporting the view that they were less confi dent in their memory judgments relative to the other groups, which did not differ on this measure. The results of the present study suggest that OCD checking is not related to memory impairments per se but rath er that checking in OCD is a symptom of decreased confidence in memory . (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.