Understanding Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: Focus on Decision Making

Current approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have suggested that neurobiological abnormalities play a crucial role in the etiology and course of this psychiatric illness. In particular, a fronto-subcortical circuit, including the orbitofrontal cortex, basal ganglia and thalamus appears to be involved in the expression of OCD symptoms. Neuropsychological studies have also shown that patients with OCD show deficits in cognitive abilities that are strictly linked to the functioning of the frontal lobe and its related fronto-subcortical structures, such as executive functioning deficits and insufficient cognitive-behavioral flexibility. This article focuses on decision making, an executive ability that plays a crucial role in many real-life situations, whereby individuals choose between pursuing strategies of action that involve only immediate reward and others based on long-term reward. Although the role of decision-making deficits in the evolution of OCD requires further research, the collected findings have significant implications for understanding the clinical and behavioral heterogeneity that characterizes individuals with OCD.     

Motivated reasoning and verbal vs. numerical probability assessment: Evidence from an accounting context

A perplexing yet persistent empirical finding is that individuals assess probabilities in words and in numbers nearly equivalently, and theorists have called for future research to search for factors that cause differences. This study uses an accounting context in which individuals are commonly motivated to reach preferred (rather than accurate) conclusions. Within this context, I predict new differences between verbal and numerical probability assessments, as follows: first, individuals will justify an optimistic verbal assessment (e.g., somewhat possible) by retaining the option of re-defining it, in case of negative outcomes, as though the phrase really means something different, and, for that matter, means more things. This re-definition will maintain some connection to the original meaning of the phrase, but de-emphasized relative to the new meaning. Second, based on this behavior, I also predict individuals’ verbal probability assessments to be (1) more biased and yet (2) perceived as more justifiable than their numerical assessments. I find supportive evidence in an experiment designed to test the hypotheses. This study contributes to motivated reasoning and probability assessment theories (1) with new evidence of how individuals can word-smith in multiple attributes of a phrase to justify reaching a preferred conclusion, and (2) with new, reliable differences between verbal and numerical probability assessments. This study has important theoretical and practical implications relevant to organizational contexts in which people assess the likelihoods of uncertainties in words or numbers, and with motivations to reach a preferred conclusion.     

Temperament, executive functions, and the allocation of attention to punishment feedback in passive avoidance learning

Several theories have been proposed to account for the apparent non-responsiveness to punishment cues or aversive events demonstrated by members of some disinhibited groups. Included among these theories are those that emphasize individual differences in temperament, temperament-related biases associated with the allocation of attentional resources, and impairments in executive functions. This study examined the relative contribution of each of these variables to the prediction of passive avoidance errors (PAEs, or failures to inhibit responding to punishment cues) during a computerized go/no-go task. Variations in temperament, attentional allocation to punishment feedback, and executive functions were found to independently and additively contribute to the prediction of PAEs in a mixed sample of men and women recruited at a university campus (n=145). Results from this study, therefore, support multiple theoretical perspectives on PAEs as assessed by the go/no-go experimental paradigm.     

The Logic of Theory Assessment

This paper starts by indicating the analysis of Hempel’s conditions of adequacy for any relation of confirmation (Hempel, 1945) as presented in Huber (submitted). There I argue contra Carnap (1962, Section 87) that Hempel felt the need for two concepts of confirmation: one aiming at plausible theories and another aiming at informative theories. However, he also realized that these two concepts are conflicting, and he gave up the concept of confirmation aiming at informative theories. The main part of the paper consists in working out the claim that one can have Hempel’s cake and eat it too — in the sense that there is a logic of theory assessment that takes into account both of the two conflicting aspects of plausibility and informativeness. According to the semantics of this logic, α is an acceptable theory for evidence β if and only if α is both sufficiently plausible given β and sufficiently informative about β. This is spelt out in terms of ranking functions (Spohn, 1988) and shown to represent the syntactically specified notion of an assessment relation. The paper then compares these acceptability relations to explanatory and confirmatory consequence relations (Flach, 2000) as well as to nonmonotonic consequence relations (Kraus et al., 1990). It concludes by relating the plausibility-informativeness approach to Carnap’s positive relevance account, thereby shedding new light on Carnap’s analysis as well as solving another problem of confirmation theory. A precursor of this paper has appeared as “The Logic of Confirmation and Theory Assessment” in L. Běhounek & M. Bílková (eds.), The Logica Yearbook 2004, Prague: Filosofia, 2005, 161–176.     

Identifying play characteristics of pre-school children with developmental coordination disorder via parental questionnaires

Motor coordination deficits that characterize children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) affect their quality of participation. The aim of the current study was to identify play characteristics of young children with DCD, compared to those of children with typical development in three dimensions: activity and participation, environmental factors and children’s impairments.MethodSixty-four children, aged four to six years, participated. Thirty were diagnosed as having DCD; the remaining 34 children were age, gender and socioeconomic level matched controls with typical development. The children were evaluated by the M-ABC. In addition, their parents completed a demographic questionnaire, the Children’s Activity Scale for Parents (CHAS-P), the Children’s Leisure Assessment Scale for preschoolers (CLASS-Pre), and My Child’s Play Questionnaire (MCP).ResultsChildren with DCD performed significantly poorer in each of the four play activity and participation domains: variety, frequency, sociability, and preference (CLASS-Pre). Furthermore, their environmental characteristics were significantly different (MCP). They displayed significantly inferior performance (impairments) in interpersonal interaction and executive functioning during play, in comparison to controls (MCP). Moreover, the children’s motor and executive control as reflected in their daily function as well as their activities of daily living (ADL) performance level, contributed to the prediction of their global play participation.DiscussionThe results indicate that the use of both the CLASS-Pre and the MCP questionnaires enables the identification of unique play characteristics of pre-school children with DCD via parents’ reports. A better insight into these characteristics may contribute to theoretical knowledge and clinical practice to improve the children’s daily participation.     

Does multitasking mediate the relationships between episodic memory,attention, executive functions and apathetic manifestations in traumatic brain injury?

Apathy is frequently described in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI); its negative consequences particularly affect functional independence. Among apathetic manifestations, lack of initiative and lack of interest have mainly been associated with cognitive impairments. However, few studies have been conducted to precisely identify the underlying cognitive processes. Our aims were (1) to determine the best predictor of apathy from among several cognitive processes, including episodic memory and attention/executive mechanisms and multitasking, and (2) to examine to what extent multitasking could mediate the relationships between specific cognitive processes and lack of initiative/interest. Seventy participants (34 patients with TBI matched with 36 control participants) were given a questionnaire to assess anxio‐depressive symptoms, four tasks to assess specific cognitive processes, and one task to assess real‐life multitasking. Participants’ relatives completed an apathy questionnaire. Multitasking, as assessed by the number of goals not achieved, was the only significant predictor of apathetic manifestations. In addition, the mediation analyses revealed that multitasking performance mediated the relationships between verbal episodic memory and lack of initiative/interest, whereas executive and attentional functions were only indirectly related to lack of initiative/interest due to their significant impacts on multitasking. These results shed new light on the aetiology of apathetic manifestations in patients with TBI, indicating how specific cognitive deficits are expressed in real‐life multitasking, and consequently, how they may lead to the development and/or maintenance of apathetic manifestations.