Journal of anxiety disorders
-
Neuropsychological assessments of participants with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) indicate impaired verbal memory if to be remembered material has to be organized. People with OCD also tend to focus their attention on their thoughts (heightened cognitive self-consciousness). We tested the hypothesis that cognitive self-consciousness causes verbal memory deficits by provoking a division of attention between study task and thoughts. ⋯ Memory was impaired in the cognitive self-consciousness condition compared to both other conditions. Independent of condition, participants with OCD showed a reduced memory performance compared to healthy controls, but did not differ from participants with MDD. Our results are in line with the hypothesis that cognitive self-consciousness causes memory impairment.