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Frequent checkers with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; n=24), high checking controls (n=24) and low checking controls (n=48) were instructed to learn action phrases such as “to open the book” by performing the action themselves with imaginary objects (motor encoding), by imagining how one performs the action oneself (motor-imaginal encoding), by imagining seeing somebody else performing the action (visual-imaginal encoding) and by subvocal rehearsal. Compared to low checking controls, OCD checkers showed poorer free recall of motorically encoded actions and poorer reality monitoring, i.e. they confused motor and motor-imaginal encoding more frequently. The results are consistent with a specific motor memory deficit in OCD checkers. Moreover, memory performance of OCD checkers differed from that of high checking controls.

The good results of the Foa et al.-study have been replicated in a German sample of patients with OCD. The German version of the OCI-R proved to be a reliable and valid self-report measure of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and appears to measure OCD quite independently from anxiety, worry, depression and perfectionism.

Obsessive-compulsive personality traits (OCPTs) are positively related to obsessive-compulsive disorder symptom dimensions (ordering, checking, hoarding and counting) hypothesized or found to be associated with incompleteness/'not just right experiences' (NJREs), but not to washing and obsessions. This positive relationship, which is strongest for ordering and checking, is eliminated when NJREs are statistically controlled. Ordering, checking and accentuated OCPTs may share NJREs as a common affective-motivational underpinning.Dysfunctional behaviour patterns of people with accentuated OCPTs or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) may be viewed as efforts to avoid or reduce subjectively intolerable NJREs. On the basis of such a conceptualization of OCPD as an emotional disorder, a novel treatment approach for OCPD focusing on habituation to NJREs could be developed.