Project Details
Projekt
Error and feedback processing for own and observed actions in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Subject Area
Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438203225
The present research program aims to further clarify changes of performance monitoring that are suggested to be hallmark features of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). To this end, processing of errors and performance-related feedback, learning from (positive and negative) feedback, and the (asymmetric) coupling of feedback valence and action type as different aspects of performance monitoring are investigated in a series of behavioral and combined behavior + EEG (event-related potentials, ERPs) experiments. Specifically, the research program is focused on unraveling the impact of agency as a contextual factor that is critical for OCD psychopathology. To this end, performance monitoring processes are investigated both in the context own and of observed actions. In addition, the project aims to clarify the specificity of the hypothesized changes in performance monitoring for OCD by including a clinical control group (patients with social anxiety disorder, SAD) and a group of healthy controls. Indeed, comparing performance monitoring processes between OCD and SAD patients, particularly as a function of context, is the logical next step towards a more comprehensive understanding of altered performance monitoring in OCD. While both disorders are centered around actions and outcomes, a modulation of agency should differentially affect performance monitoring in OCD and SAD. In SAD, the perception and evaluation of one’s own actions by others are at the core of the psychopathology, whereas in OCD, dysfunctional illusions of control, possibly to due deficient sensorimotor integration, prevail. Hence, a manipulation of agency, i.e., the investigation of performance monitoring in the context of own and observed actions by means of established experimental paradigms, promises to be very informative with regard to these disorders.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
Co-Investigator
Professor Dr. Christian Bellebaum
