Attentional processing of emotional information in obsessive–compulsive disorder

In order to investigate attentional processing of emotional information in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), 14 patients with OCD and 28 normal control (NC) subjects were asked to name the background colors of anxiety‐relevant, compulsion‐relevant, positive and neutral words (an emotional Stroop color‐naming test). The stimulus words were presented subliminally, and supraliminally. The time of subliminal presentation for each subject was determined in advance by the lexical decision task. In the subliminal condition, the delay for anxiety‐ and compulsion‐relevant words, when compared with neutral words, was greater in OCD patients, while no difference was found in NC subjects. In the supraliminal condition, no delay was found for both OCD patients and NC subjects. In other words, OCD patients were more sensitive to threat information when it could not be identified with consciousness. Moreover, the present study compared checking OCD with cleaning OCD in the attentional processing of emotional information. As a result, it was found that checking OCD patients responded more slowly in naming the background color of subliminal emotional words than cleaning OCD patients. The results indicate that OCD patients, especially with checking compulsion, may have a deficit in automatic processing of threat information.