Because of the repetitive nature of many OCD symptoms, there has been some suggestion that people with OCD may experience some sort of problem with memory and simply forget that they’ve already carried out their compulsion.
Does Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Cause Memory Impairment?
Before talking about OCD and memory it may be useful to remember that there is more than one kind of memory. For instance, memories can be stored both as words (verbal memory) and as experiences such as images, shapes, faces, sounds, tastes, and feelings (non-verbal memory). For example, in comparison to people without OCD, people with OCD may have trouble accurately recalling and drawing a complex geometric shape that they have just been shown. Likewise, OCD has been linked to deficits in spatial memory such as remembering places on a map or the location of a room within a building. Research suggests that these deficits in non-verbal memory are probably caused by the way information is encoded in the brain. Specifically, in OCD, certain information seems to be stored and organized in a way that can make it difficult to access when it needs to be recalled.
Metamemory and OCD
Metamemory refers to a person’s knowledge or awareness about their own memory and how confident they are in their own memory performance. Not surprisingly, people with OCD, particularly those who have symptoms involving checking, have less confidence in their memory than those without OCD. Also, the worse OCD symptoms are, the worse this confidence in memory seems to be. Interestingly, people’s level of confidence in their memory does not always correlate to their actual performance on memory tasks.
A Word From Verywell
So, what does this all mean for our understanding and treatment of OCD? This raises important questions for further study. Do the changes in memory, particularly non-verbal abilities and metamemory seen in OCD, reflect a cause or effect of the obsessions and compulsions that go along with OCD? Do these cognitive deficits improve with treatment? Are there ways to target these neurocognitive changes with particular treatment interventions? There have been some studies conducted in this area, but more research is needed.
