The comparison of working- and prospective memory performance between people with washing and checking compulsions and those with generalized anxiety disorder

The present research aims to compare the cognitive performance of the people suffering from washing compulsion، checking compulsion and generalized anxiety disorder in the realm of working and prospective memories. the selected sample in this causal-comparative study included 14 subjects suffering from checking compulsion، 14 from washing compulsion، 17 from generalized stress and 15 normal people who were matched for age، level of education، as well as social and economic status variables. The tool package employed in this investigation comprised Yale-brown obsessive-compulsive scale، Beck’s depression and anxiety inventories، the prospective memory test، the letter-numbering sequencing subtest، Wechsler’s memory test، and the information processing index test. Findings were analyzed using the ANOVA، MANOVA analysis statistical methods. as indicated by our results، the average overall score of the healthy group was higher than that of the washing compulsion group in the visual section while the average scores of the groups suffering from general anxiety and checking compulsion were significantly higher than that of the normal group showing a suboptimal performance in checking compulsion and general anxiety groups compared to the normal subjects. The present findings could be interpretable within the framework of the cognitive theories of anxiety disorders.