Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Dept. of Psychology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [104]-110).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-158).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Robert F. Simons, Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Psychology)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2007. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

An individual who had been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Schizoaffective Disorder requested assistance with improving his ability to manage symptoms. He had a history of long-term hospitalizations that impacted his placements in residential facilities. He was treated using exposure and response prevention procedures applied to specific rituals pertaining to compulsive bed making, organization, excessive emptying of vacuum canister, excessive hand washing and excessive laundering of clothing. A baseline was established for each ritual by the experimenter exposing the subject to the conditions that "triggered" the rituals. The latency was measured between the presentation of those conditions and the onset of the ritual. During treatment, the subject initiated the same conditions and then refrained from engaging in his rituals for a specific amount of time. Initially, the requested time was the average amount of time he was able to refrain from ritualizing in the baseline sessions. Then, the subject initiated exposure and refrained from the ritual for an increasing amount of time until he was able to refrain for 15 minutes or longer for three ritualistic behaviors. A multiple baseline analysis across rituals indicated that during the course of treatment, over a period of about 4 months, his ability to tolerate the triggers for his rituals was increased to the point that he did not engage in the rituals during the sessions.

Standard methods of assessment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) involve retrospective report of symptoms over a prior period of interest (e.g., a week, a month, etc.). However, such accounts may be subject to recall biases, leading to inaccurate assessments of symptoms. Recall biases present in two domains of symptom severity (distress and interference) were examined. The following study applied experience-sampling methods (ESM) to OCD symptom assessment. Using a modified form of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, twenty-one adults with a primary diagnosis of OCD rated distress and interference of their principle obsession and compulsion four times daily for approximately one week. At the end of the experience-sampling period, participants provided retrospective estimates of distress and interference of principle obsessions and compulsions experienced during the course of the ESM period. Results found that participants retrospectively overestimated OCD ratings, compared to their real-time ratings. Two proposed reasons for such overestimates (peak-end evaluation and symptom variability) were examined though not supported based on current study results. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Misophonia is a decreased sound tolerance condition (DST) that is not yet well-established in the literature. However, the existing research on misophonia shows that it is occurring at substantial levels in the population. The majority of the existing literature has focused on the clinical correlates of misophonia. Although the correlates have been investigated, there is no accepted mechanism behind misophonia etiology or maintenance. The present study examined three hypotheses in order to start to identify potential mechanisms behind misophonia: how emotional predilections are related to the emotional response, how obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms and misophonia are related, and the possibility that the relationship between anxiety sensitivity (AS) and misophonia may be explained in part by the presence of OCD symptoms. Data were collected by Cash (2015) using both undergraduate students (N=451) and community participants (N = 377) using Amazon’s MTurk. Participants completed an online cross-sectional survey assessing for a number of decreased sound tolerance conditions, individual differences variables, and clinical variables. The current study specifically used measures of anxiety sensitivity, OCD, misophonia symptom severity, trait anger, and trait anxiety. Consistent with the literature on state-trait theory, trait emotion was predictive of state levels, such that trait anger was most predictive of an angry misophonic response and trait anxiety was most predictive of an anxious reaction to misophonic stimuli. Misophonia was more strongly related to obsessive than to compulsive components of OCD, consistent with case reports of obsessive thoughts in misophonia. Lastly, OCD symptoms partially mediated the relationship between AS symptom severity and misophonia symptom severity. These results supported our hypotheses, and align with the theorized role of anxiety sensitivity in OCD and in misophonia. Although the data are cross-sectional in nature, and causality cannot be confirmed, the current study provides a strong basis for future research into the mechanisms of misophonia.

This project investigated the metacognitive strategies used to appraise obsessive thoughts employed by individuals with different anxiety symptoms. Two hundred eighty-seven undergraduate students completed two repertory grids and three anxiety scales. The repertory grids respectively examined the appraisal process of intrusive thoughts both from the perspective of the rater and the rater's imagined average person. Variables quantified from the rep grid related to the construal process of raters' own intrusions, failed to demonstrate robust differences between OCD, non-OCD anxious, and non-anxious individuals. However, it appears that anxious individuals, not just those with OCD, use metacognitive strategies to suppress rigid constructions under perceived social evaluation. Future studies may wish to use related grid variables to explore the relation between obsessions and social anxiety.