Deductive and inductive reasoning in obsessive‐compulsive disorder

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: This study tested the hypothesis that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show an inductive reasoning style distinct from people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and from participants in a non-anxious (NA) control group. DESIGN: The experimental procedure consisted of administering a range of six deductive and inductive tasks and a probabilistic task in order to compare reasoning processes between groups. METHODS: Recruitment was in the Montreal area within a French-speaking population. The participants were 12 people with OCD, 12 NA controls and 10 people with GAD. Participants completed a series of written and oral reasoning tasks including the Wason Selection Task, a Bayesian probability task and other inductive tasks, designed by the authors. RESULTS: There were no differences between groups in deductive reasoning. On an inductive "bridging task", the participants with OCD always took longer than the NA control and GAD groups to infer a link between two statements and to elaborate on this possible link. The OCD group alone showed a significant decrease in their degree of conviction about an arbitrary statement after inductively generating reasons to support this statement. Differences in probabilistic reasoning replicated those of previous authors. CONCLUSIONS: The results pinpoint the importance of examining inference processes in people with OCD in order to further refine the clinical applications of behavioural-cognitive therapy for this disorder.

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