Obsessive-compulsive disorder and thinking illusions

Summary A growing amount of evidence suggests that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) could be associated with cognitive deficits. OCD patients show mnestic and executive dysfunctions and it is a common opinion that cognitive dysfunctions can play a relevant role in mnestic alterations of OCD patients by means of the mediation of ineffective organization strategies. Other authors evidenced different cognitive alterations in OC subjects, such as inferential confusion (O’Connor, 2002; Aardema et al., 2005) or cognitive flexibility deficits in problem-solving (Chamberlain et al., 2006; 2007). Other researches in inductive and deductive reasoning (Pelissier and O’Connor, 2002; Simpson, Cove, Fineberg, Msetfi and Ball, 2007; Pelissier, O’Connor and Dupuis, 2009) showed that OC patients need more information and postpone the final decision. In the present contribution we wish to underline the existence of some cognitive illusions that are normal and generalized within the population. Such illusions are able to facilitate the origin and the maintenance of OCD. We consequently will analyze, following the classification of Pohl (2004), illusions of thinking (conjunction fallacy, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, illusion of control, biases in deductive and causal reasoning), illusions of judgement (availability and representativeness, anchoring effect, validity effect), and memory illusions (associative memory illusions, effects of labelling and misinformation effect) and their relationships with OCD. In conclusion, we will draw some theoretical and clinical implications.

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