ArticleQuarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)2018
Free operant observing in humans: a translational approach to compulsive certainty seeking.
Article in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Computational modelling reveals contrasting effects on reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility in stimulant use disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder: remediating effects of dopaminergic D2/3 receptor agents.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Reward and punishment learning among people with a lifetime history of anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Agonism at mGluR2 receptors reduces dysfunctional checking on a rodent analogue of compulsive-like checking in obsessive compulsive disorder.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Excessive Checking in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Neurochemical Correlates Revealed by 7T Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2024Article
- Dissociable dopaminergic and pavlovian influences in goal-trackers and sign-trackers on a model of compulsive checking in OCD.Psychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Checking responses of goal- and sign-trackers are differentially affected by threat in a rodent analog of obsessive-compulsive disorder.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Excessive checking is reported in non-clinical populations and is a pervasive symptom in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We implemented a free-operant task in humans, previously used in rats, wherein participants can "check" to reduce uncertainty. Participants can press an observing key to ascertain which of two main keys will, if pressed, currently lead to rewards. Over a series of experiments, we found that punishment robustly increased observing in non-clinical participants and that observing persisted long after punishment was removed. Moreover, participants appeared insensitive to the initial costs of checking, and a threefold increase in the effort required to observe served to deter participants only to a limited degree. We also assessed observing in OCD patients with no known comorbidities. The patients observed more than control participants and were abnormally insensitive to the introduction of punishment. These findings support the translational value of the task, with similar behaviours in humans and rodents. This paradigm may serve as a unifying platform, promoting interaction between different approaches to analyse adaptive and maladaptive certainty seeking behaviours. Specifically, we demonstrate how seemingly disparate theoretical and empirical approaches can be reconciled synergistically to promote a combined behavioural and cognitive account of certainty seeking.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.