Cognitive Process in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Cross-Sectional Analytic Study

Introduction: In recent studies, deficit in cognitive process has been investigated as one of the etiological hypotheses in a wide range of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This research aimed to compare cognitive process in patients with OCD and healthy groups. Methods: In the current cross-sectional analytic study, 43 patients with OCD and 43 healthy individuals matched with gender, age, educational and marital status were selected by convenience sampling method and assessed by Wisconsin Cart Sorting Test (WCST), Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS). The obtained data were analyzed with Chi-square, Independent t test, Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson correlation in SPSS version16. Results: There was no difference between the patients with OCD and the healthy group in demographic characteristics (P>0.05). There was a significant differences between two group on the all subscale of WCST test and PASAT3, PASAT2 tests (P<0.01). These findings indicate that the OCD patient’s performance in cognitive process was significantly worse than the healthy controls.  Conclusion: The findings indicate that individuals with OCD suffer from a deficiency in various aspects of cognitive processes. Therefore, paying attention to these deficiencies can make an important contribution to the treatment of these patients.