A psycholinguistic investigation of biased semantic networks in contamination-related obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background And Objectives: Increasing evidence confirms the significant involvement of disgust in contamination-related obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OCD). More insights into the role of disgust within cognitive biases in OCD may illuminate the psychopathology and corresponding subdimensions or subtypes. The present study introduces a new approach adopted from psycholinguistic research to investigate biases in word association networks in C-OCD versus other OCD symptom dimensions (nC-OCD).

Method: Individuals with OCD (N = 70; N = 42 with C-OCD, N = 28 with nC- OCD) and healthy controls (HC; N = 36) were asked to produce up to five verbal associations with cue words. Written forms of the recorded associations were analyzed with word lexica providing rating norms for valence, arousal, potency, fear, and disgust. We examined bivariate correlations between OCI-R subscale "Washing" and affective variables across all participants. We investigated group differences in semantic biases in the association responses to these five variables given to standardized (three-group comparison: C-OCD vs. nC-OCD vs. HC) and individual (two-group comparison: C-OCD vs. nC-OCD) cue words.

Results: "Washing" and disgust showed the strongest correlation. The three-group comparison revealed more negative valence and disgust-related associations for C-OCD as compared to HC and nC-OCD. Associations generated by the C-OCD group were more pronounced in all emotion variables as compared to the nC-OCD group.

Limitations: Rating norms did not cover all word associations, resulting in missing data. The OCD groups were unbalanced due to post-hoc allocation.

Conclusions: Results support the assumption of differentially biased semantic networks across the OCD spectrum, with greater negativity and disgust in C-OCD.