Uncertainty, checking, and intolerance of uncertainty in subclinical obsessive compulsive disorder: An extended replication

Recently, Toffolo, van den Hout, Hooge, Engelhard, and Cath (2013, 1, 103-109) showed that individuals with subclinical OCD (OC+) respond with more checking behavior to mildly uncertain situations than individuals with low OC tendencies (OC−). The present study aimed to replicate and extend these findings by measuring Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), and including the whole range of OC tendencies in a correlation analysis. Participants filled out the Obsessive Compulsive Inventory Revised and Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale and performed a visual search task. This task contained 50 search displays, in which participants indicated whether a target was “present” or “absent”. Target-present trials were straight-forward, but target-absent trials were ambiguous, because participants had to rely on not having overlooked the target. Results revealed that target-absent trials induced more uncertainty than target-present trials. Furthermore, OC+ participants checked longer than OC− participants in target-absent but not target-present trials. This could not be explained by higher IU in OC+ participants. There were no differences in number of fixations in absent and present trials between the groups. Finally, when looking at the whole range of OC tendencies, there was a positive relation between OC tendencies and checking behavior. The findings (partly) replicated those of Toffolo et al. (2013) and add to their robustness.