Gyula Demeter

first year college student’s event-based PM performance negatively correlated with the
individual levels of anxiety (Harris and Menzies, 1999).
Another study found evidence (Harris, Vaccaro, Jones & Boots, 2010) supporting the
event-based PM deficit in a clinical sample of OCD checkers. The patients in this study did
not report more subjective PM errors and their confidence in PM accuracy was higher than
that of control subjects which is inconsistent with the Cuttler and Graf previous findings with
subclinical checkers (2007, 2008). The OCD checkers expressed greater confidence in event
based PM task and predicted also that they will be more accurate on the time based PM task
then controls. The later finding was interpreted by the availability of an extrinsic checking
strategy. But they manifested impaired performance on the event based PM, showing that
objective PM deficits can also occur in the absence of more complaints about PM failures
(Harris et al., 2010).
Due to these results the hypothesis and theoretical explanation of Cuttler and Graff
(2009) may need remediation. It seems that clinical OCD checkers have an inappropriate
insight to their own PM abilities and therefore it is unlikely that their concern about PM
failures is driving their checking behavior. Checking is a much more successful strategy in
this phase of the disorder which helps avoiding PM failures, but the question is still open for
future research, because it is still possible that checking has developed at the early stage as a
response to the concerns about PM failures (Harris et al., 2010).
According to our view this heterogeneous clinical group could contribute to the filed of
PM research with considerable results. In our studies answers were seeked to the following
main questions:
- Is there an event-based PM impairment in OCD?
- Why is there a PM impairment in OCD?
- Can the findings from this specific population add something to the existing
theoretical models?
- What are the therapeutical benefits of these findings?
We think that after intention execution, OCD patients have difficulties cancelling
successful activities, which rely on inhibition deficit. We also think that in OCD the PM
system is in an overactivated state, which manifests at the behavioral level in an over-
monitoring activity for PM cues.
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