Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients display enhanced latent inhibition on a visual search task

Oren Kaplan, Reuven Dar, Lirona Rosenthal, Haggai Hermesh, Mendel Fux, R. E. Lubow*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Latent inhibition (LI) is a phenomenon that reflects the ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli. LI is attenuated in some schizophrenic patient groups and in high schizotypal normal participants. One study has found enhanced LI in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD [Swerdlow, N. R., Hartston, H. J., & Hartman, P. L., 1999. Enhanced visual latent inhibition in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 45, 482-488]). The present experiment replicated this finding using a within-subject visual search LI task, with OCD patients displaying more LI than healthy controls. The contrasting LI effects in schizophrenia and OCD are discussed in terms of how these groups differentially process relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and how that outcome affects subsequent behavior.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1137-1145
Number of pages9
JournalBehaviour Research and Therapy
Volume44
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2006

Funding

FundersFunder number
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Israel Science Foundation

    Keywords

    • Anxiety
    • Attention
    • Latent inhibition
    • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
    • Schizophrenia
    • Visual search

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