Executive functions, selective attention and information processing in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder: A study from west of Iran

•OCD patients had a worse performance on executive functions compare to healthy individual.•Patients with OCD showed deficit in selective attention in comparison with healthy controls.•Performance of OCD patients in information processing speed were significantly weaker than control group.•Evaluated effect size were considerable between OCD patients and healthy individual. Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with cognitive dysfunction. Deeper and wider knowledge of the cognitive components of these patients can play an important role in better understanding of this disorder. This study aimed to compare executive function, selective attention and information processing in OCD patients and healthy controls. The current study was performed on 54 patients meeting DSM-5 criteria for OCD and 54 healthy subjects who matched with patients in gender, age, marital and educational status. The cognitive functions were assessed by The Stroop test, Wisconsin Cart Sorting Test (WCST), Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS). The performance of the OCD group was significantly worse than the healthy group in comparison with the all subscales of the Stroop and WSCT tests. Also, functions in information processing among two groups were statistically significant for 3- and 2-second PASAT. The results demonstrated that OCD patients have deficits in several aspects of cognitive functions. Hence, the treatment of these patients can be contributed by paying more attention to these deficits.