The role of spatial store and executive strategy in spatial working memory: a comparison between patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and controls.

Introduction: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) showed impaired spatial working memory (SWM). We evaluated whether patients and healthy controls (HCs) differed in spatial store capacity, and whether they differed in the relative weight of spatial store capacity and/or executive strategy in SWM.

Methods: Thirty inpatients with OCD and 31 age- and education-matched HCs underwent the CANTAB SWM, SRM (a measure of spatial store).