Are nonclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms associated with bias toward habits?

Snorrason, Ívar; Lee, Han-Joo; Wit, Sanne de; Woods, Douglas W.

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2016.04.067

Cited by 35 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, it is notable that we replicated the association between OCD symptoms and action-confidence decoupling observed in a clinical sample that were tested in-person 12 . The same applies to goal-directed planning, which is both deficient in patients tested in-person 9 and correlated with OCD symptoms in the general population tested online 17,26 . Notably, recent work in a patient sample even found that goal-directed deficits were more strongly associated with the compulsivity dimension than OCD diagnosis status 27 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Transdiagnostic Phenotyping Reveals a Host of Metacognitive Deficits Implicated in Compulsivity

Seow

Gillan

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent work suggests that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients have a breakdown in the relationship between explicit beliefs (i.e. confidence about states) and updates to behaviour. The precise computations underlying this disconnection are unclear because casecontrol and transdiagnostic studies yield conflicting results. Here, a large general population sample (N = 437) completed a predictive inference task previously studied in the context of OCD. We tested if confidence, and its relationship to action and environmental evidence, were specifically associated with self-reported OCD symptoms or common to an array of psychiatric symptoms. We then investigated if a transdiagnostic approach would reveal a stronger and more specific match between metacognitive deficits and clinical phenotypes.Consistent with prior case-control work, we found that decreases in action-confidence coupling were associated with OCD symptoms, but also 5/8 of the other clinical phenotypes tested (8/8 with no correction applied). This non-specific pattern was explained by a single transdiagnostic symptom dimension characterized by compulsivity that was linked to inflated confidence and several deficits in utilizing evidence to update confidence. These data highlight the importance of metacognitive deficits for our understanding of compulsivity and underscore how transdiagnostic methods may prove a more powerful alternative over studies examining single disorders.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Transdiagnostic Phenotyping Reveals a Host of Metacognitive Deficits Implicated in Compulsivity

Seow

Gillan

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Power estimation. We determined a minimum sample size from a prior study that investigated the association of goal-directed control (on a different task) with OCI-R scores from non-clinical participants who were also tested in-person (r = -0.26, p < 0.05) (Snorrason, Lee, de Wit, & Woods, 2016). The effect size indicated that N = 150 participants were required to achieve 90% power at 0.05 significance.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model-based learning deficits in compulsivity are linked to faulty representations of task structure

Seow

O’Connell

Gillan

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individuals with higher levels of compulsivity exhibit poorer performance on tasks that require model-based planning but the underlying causes have yet to be established. Here, we sought to determine whether these deficits stem from impoverished action-outcome relational knowledge (i.e. issues building an accurate model of the world) and/or an inability to translate models into action. 192 participants performed a two-step reinforcement learning task with concurrent EEG recordings. We found that representations of task-relevant action-outcome associations reflected in reaction time and parietal-occipital alpha-band power were stronger in individuals whose decisions were more model-based, and critically, were weaker in those high in compulsivity. At the time of choice, mid-frontal theta power, a general marker of cognitive control, was also negatively associated with compulsivity, but not model-based planning. These data suggest that model-based planning deficits in compulsive individuals may arise from failures in building an accurate model of the world.

show abstract

“…Participants did not receive feedback but were told that they would still earn points for correct responses for still-valuable outcomes but lose points for responses for devalued outcomes. To assess the balance between goal-directed and habitual control, a devaluation sensitivity index (DSI) was computed by subtracting the percentage of responses for devalued outcomes from that for still-valuable outcomes (Gillan et al, 2011; de Wit et al, 2012a; Snorrason et al, 2016). This index represents the relative involvement of the habit vs. goal-directed system in action control, i.e., high scores indicate strong goal-directed responding, whereas low scores suggest a habit propensity.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such conditions include obsessive-compulsive disorder (Gillan et al, 2011, 2014), drug addiction (e.g., Everitt and Robbins, 2005; Everitt et al, 2008; Redish et al, 2008; Sjoerds et al, 2013; Voon et al, 2015), and obesity (Volkow and Wise, 2005; Horstmann et al, 2015a). Further, predominance of habitual control has been argued to contribute to individual differences in compulsive tendencies (Snorrason et al, 2016) and impulsivity (Everitt et al, 2008; Hogarth et al, 2012) in non-clinical samples, indicated by outcome devaluation tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the critical ‘slips-of-action’ test phase, some of the outcomes were devalued, allowing evaluation of participants’ ability to adapt responding based on the current goal or outcome value, as opposed to relying on inflexible stimulus-response habits. We restricted the experimental procedure to the standard discrimination type of the original ‘slips-of-action’ test phase, as this discrimination type has been shown to be sufficiently sensitive to evaluate the balance between habitual and goal-directed action control in clinical and pre-clinical pathological conditions (Gillan et al, 2011; Delorme et al, 2016; Snorrason et al, 2016) and after pharmacological manipulations affecting dopamine and serotonin neurotransmission (de Wit et al, 2012a; Delorme et al, 2016). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

General Habit Propensity Relates to the Sensation Seeking Subdomain of Impulsivity But Not Obesity

Dietrich

Wit

Horstmann

2016

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

According to dual-system theory, instrumental learning and performance depend on the balance between goal-directed and habitual action control. Overreliance on habits has been argued to characterize clinical conditions such as drug addiction or obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as obesity and excessive impulsivity. A tendency toward habitual action control in obesity has already been indicated in the food domain. However, impairments might not be restricted to eating behavior. This has been suggested by domain-general obesity-associated disturbances in executive function as well as alterations in corticostriatal circuits underlying the goal-directed and habitual systems. In this study we examined the balance of goal-directed and habitual action control in a sample of normal-weight, overweight, and obese participants (n = 105) using the slips-of-action test in a non-food context. We tested for continuous or group-based associations between body weight status (BMI) and the devaluation sensitivity index (DSI), a parameter representing the balance of the goal-directed and habitual systems in action control. As personality differences in the domain of impulsivity might affect this relationship, we also examined whether the interaction between BMI and self-reported impulsivity, based on the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale, was related to the DSI. In addition to that, we tested for direct, i.e., weight status independent, relationships between UPPS subdomains of impulsivity and the DSI. We failed to find evidence for a relationship between weight status and sensitivity to devaluation as indexed by the DSI. However, independent of weight status, we observed lower sensitivity to devaluation in sensation seekers, a subtype of impulsivity. To conclude, behavioral flexibility in the sense of disturbances in the balance between the habitual and goal-directed systems seems to be unaffected by weight status in a non-food context. Consequently, stimuli and behavior might not be generally excessively linked in overweight or obesity. However, according to ceiling effects we cannot rule out subtle effects the paradigm was not able to disentangle. Further, future studies are needed to clarify the role of specific subtypes of obesity (e.g., food addiction). The indicated habit propensity in sensation seekers may account for previous reports of weak avoidance behavior and risky decision making.

show abstract

Are nonclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms associated with bias toward habits?

Cited by 35 publications

References 16 publications

Transdiagnostic Phenotyping Reveals a Host of Metacognitive Deficits Implicated in Compulsivity

Transdiagnostic Phenotyping Reveals a Host of Metacognitive Deficits Implicated in Compulsivity

Model-based learning deficits in compulsivity are linked to faulty representations of task structure

General Habit Propensity Relates to the Sensation Seeking Subdomain of Impulsivity But Not Obesity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About