DISTRUST OF THE SENSES, IMAGINED POSSIBILITIES, REASONING ERRORS AND DOUBT GENERATION IN OBSESSIONAL-COMPULSIVE DISORDER

The aim of this study was to test whether obsessional-compulsive narratives contain reasoning devices postulated by the inference-based approach (IBA) to generate inferential confusion (defined as distrust of the senses and on overinvestment in imagined/hypothetical possibilities). Two sets of seven judges recruited as a naive, a knowledgeable or an expert group judged whether the content of eight verification and six contamination narratives contained “thought components” of four IBA reasoning devices and four classical cognitive distortions (CCD). All judges rated IBA thought components more frequent than CCD components. There was no statistically significant difference between naive, knowledgeable or expert judges. There was however a difference in the profile of the percentage of the four separate types of IBA components rated present in verification and contamination narratives.