Missing the forest for the trees? Deficient memory for linguistic gist in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Background. Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit recal l deficits on word learning tasks, mediated by their failure to detect sema ntic connections among the words. Methods. In the present experiment, using methods devised by Bransford & Fr anks (1971), we tested whether this encoding problem impairs their extracti on of gist from complex linguistic material. Results. Consistent with our hypothesis, OCD patients extracted less gist f rom related sentences than did healthy participants. The groups did not dif fer in recognition memory for individual sentences or in criterion for affi rming previously encountered sentences as 'old', as evinced by signal detec tion indices of memory sensitivity (d ') and response bias (beta), or in re cognition memory confidence. Conclusions. These data provide further evidence that OCD patients exhibit less reliance on organizational strategies than do healthy control particip ants. These data are consistent with neuropsychological research suggestive of prefrontal executive problems in OCD.