Decision-making deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder are associated with abnormality of recency and response consistency parameter in prospect valence learning model.

Background: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have deficits in decision-making in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). However, no study has investigated the parameters of the prospect valence learning (PVL) model in the IGT for OCD. Aims: This study aimed to investigate deficits in decision-making in OCD using the PVL model and identify whether the parameters of the PVL model were associated with obsessive-compulsive severity. Methods: Forty-seven medication-free patients with OCD were compared with 47 healthy controls (HCs). Decision-making was measured using the total net and block net scores of the IGT. A PVL model with a decay-reinforcement learning rule (PVL-DecayRI) was used to investigate the parameters of the model. Correlation analysis was conducted between each parameter of the PVL-DecayRL and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Results: The total net score of patients with OCD was significantly lower than that of the HCs. The block net scores of the OCD group did not differ across the five blocks, whereas in the HCs, the fifth block net score was significantly higher than the block net scores of the first and second blocks. The values of the recency and response consistency parameters of the PVL-DecayRI in patients with OCD were significantly lower than those in HCs. The recency parameter positively correlated with the Y-BOCS obsessive score. Meanwhile, there was no correlation between consistency parameter values and symptom severity in OCD. Conclusion: Our detailed analysis of the decision-making deficit in OCD suggests that the most recent outcome has a small influence on the expectancy of prospect valence, as indicated by the lower recency parameter, and is characterized by more impulsive choices, as indicated by the lower consistency parameter.

The Impact of Gender and Age Differences and Infectious Disease Symptoms on Psychological Distress in Quarantined Asymptomatic or Mildly Ill COVID-19 Patients in Japan.

Quarantine imposed due to COVID-19 infection can exacerbate psychological distress, and it is important for a public mental health agency to identify factors that are predictive of high psychological distress in such situation. The aim of this study was to investigate whether gender, age, and the presence or absence of infectious disease symptoms affected psychological distress among asymptomatic or mildly ill COVID-19 patients who were quarantined. Participants were 436 asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic COVID-19-infected patients who were quarantined in a treatment facility between 1 May 2020 and 30 September 2021. We used Quantification Theory I analysis to investigate the effects of gender, age, and the nature of infectious disease symptoms on psychological distress. The results of the analysis showed that the contribution rate was 0.06. Among gender, age, presence of symptoms, and the nature of symptoms, age had the greatest effect on psychological distress, and being in one's teens to thirties was considered to exacerbate psychological distress the most. According to the results, the psychological distress of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic COVID-19 patients isolated was affected by gender, age, and symptomology, especially due to age differences. However, the impact of these items on psychological distress was not considered significant.

Development of a scale to assess obsessive-compulsive tendencies among Japanese university students.

Obsessive-compulsive (OC) tendencies refer to obsessions and compulsions in a nonclinical group, which are risk factors for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OC tendencies and OC symptoms are mainly assessed using five factors: ordering, obsessions, cleaning, hoarding, and checking. However, since hoarding is now classified as an independent diagnosis in the DSM-V, this factor was not included and was instead replaced by indecisiveness. Furthermore, many established scales used for measuring OC tendencies were originally created for OCD patients; thus, they cannot adequately capture OC tendencies. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a scale to assess OC tendencies among Japanese university students with a revised five-factor structure: ordering, obsessions, cleaning, indecisiveness, and checking. We examined the factor structure, reliability, criterion-related validity, and convergent validity of the OC tendencies scale by administering two surveys. In Survey 1 (N = 216), an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to examine the criterion-related and convergent validity and reliability of the OC tendencies scale. In Survey 2 (N = 202), a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted. EFA and CFA utilized a five-factor structure comprising checking, ordering, indecisiveness, cleaning, and obsessions. Correlations with other scales indicated that the OC tendencies scale had efficient convergent validity, criterion-related validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability. This study validated the five-factor structure of OC tendency in Japanese university students. However, indecisiveness was also strongly correlated with trait-anxiety. As this scale is easy to administer among large groups, it has the potential to contribute to mental health support for university students by measuring OC tendencies experienced on a daily basis, which have not been adequately measured in the past.