Electrophysiological and Behavioural Investigation of Decision-Making Parameters in Traits Associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive Compulsive disorder is said to be a disability of decision making. As mental disorders are considered to have neurological bases, the present study focuses on the electrophysiological effects of multisensory integration on response time and accuracy to understand the process of response execution. By incorporating the drift diffusion model parameters through a two-alternative forced choice discrimination experiment, the current investigation also probes the process of evidence accumulation. Previous studies have mainly focused on group comparisons of clinical and healthy individuals, the present study, however, studies Obsessive-Compulsive traits in a subclinical sample. The analyses of the data revealed that a) multisensory integration results in a decrease in response time compared to uni-sensory stimuli across the sample, b) the centro-parietal positivity represents evidence accumulation prior to response execution, c) individuals with high Obsessive-Compulsive traits fail to respond to tasks more than individuals with low Obsessive-Compulsive traits. The study was unable to find statistically significant changes in response accuracy or the parameters of the drift diffusion model. It was also concluded that directional changes of uni-sensory and multisensory stimuli do not affect response time or accuracy. Recommendations for future work and clinical and pharmacological implications are discussed.