MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSING IN PATIENTS WITH OBSESSIVE- COMPULSIVE DISORDER

Date

2025-3-14

Author

Belendir, Zeynep

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The present study examines how individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) process inflected and derived words during visual word recognition. A second aim is to determine whether procedural memory deficits contribute to differences in morphological processing in OCD. Grounded in Ullman’s declarative/procedural (DP) memory model, this study explores how impairments in frontostriatal circuits—associated with procedural memory—affect rule-based morphological decomposition, while medial temporal lobe structures supporting declarative memory remain intact. 36 individuals diagnosed with OCD and 36 healthy controls were tested through a lexical decision task using masked priming paradigm in terms of their processing of Turkish inflected verbs and derived nouns. The results showed that the processing of inflected words in the OCD group was selectively impaired. Patients with OCD demonstrated a statistically significant decreased sensitivity to inflectional morphology although the processing of derived words remained intact – indicating a reliance on declarative memory as a compensatory route. Control group displayed automatic decomposition for both inflected and derived words. These findings provide empirical evidence that morphological decomposition mechanisms are selectively impaired due to the procedural memory deficits in OCD only for the inflected morphological items. In spite of this impairment, the functioning of the declarative-memory dependent whole-word storage mechanisms remained intact in the OCD group. This study provides insights into the neurobiological bases of language difficulties in OCD by connecting morphological processing to the procedural memory dysfunctions. These findings highlight the significance of language as an indicator of broader cognitive impairments, with possible ramifications for treatment strategies aimed at cognitive rehabilitation and language-oriented therapy.

Subject Keywords

Morphological Decomposition, Procedural Memory Impairment, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Inflectional and Derivational Morphology, Masked Priming Paradigm

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/114068

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis