Obsessive-compulsive tendencies predict seeking proxies for understanding.

Background And Objectives: The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) postulates that obsessive-compulsive (OC) individuals have reduced access to their internal states and must therefore seek and rely on external proxies for these states. The present study extended this hypothesis to the feeling of understanding, which had not been examined previously in relation to OCD.

Methods: We presented 148 participants with a computerized task requiring them to read and understand a text on medieval architecture.