The perseveration of checking thoughts and mood–as–input hypothesis

This paper describes two experiments designed to investigate how a current model of task perseveration, the mood-as-input hypothesis, might be applied to activities relevant to compulsive checking. The mood-as-input hypothesis predicts that perseveration at an open-ended task will be determined by a combination of the “stop rules” adopted for the task, and the valency of the mood state in which the task is conducted. Experiment 1 required participants to generate items that should be checked for safety/security if they were leaving their home unattended. Experiment 2 used an analogue recall task, in which participants were asked to recall items from a comprehensive list of items that should be checked if they were to leave their home safe/secure. Both experiments found that perseveration at the tasks was determined by particular configurations of mood and stop rules for the task. Of most relevance to compulsive checking was the fact that facilitated perseveration occurred when participants were asked to undertake the tasks in a negative mood using “as many as can” stop rules. Implications for the factors that develop and maintain compulsive checking are discussed

Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories and imagined events in sub-clinical obsessive-compulsive checkers

Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories and imagined experiences were examined in checking- and non-checking-prone individuals. Participants were asked to retrieve a positive, a negative and a neutral memory, and to imagine a positive, a negative and a neutral experience. They were then requested to evaluate each event according to characteristics such as sensory and contextual details. The main results revealed that non-checking-prone participants reported more general vividness than checking-prone individuals for real events. In addition, non-checking-prone individuals reported more visual details and vividness for real than imagined experiences, while no difference between real and imagined events was found for checking-prone participants. These results suggest that checking-prone participants report poor memories of real events, which could in turn explain their difficulties distinguishing between real and imagined events. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd