Abstract

This study intended to investigate impairment of visual and verbal memory, and mediating effects of organizational strategies on the impaired memory of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(OCD) patients. In this study, Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test(RCFT) and Korean-California Verbal Learning Test(K-CVLT) were administrated to 28 OCD patients and 28 normal control subjects to assess their visual memory and visual organizational strategies as well as verbal memory and verbal organizational strategies(semantic clustering). The results showed that a group of OCD patients indicated impairment in visual memory but didn't in verbal memory over a group of normal control. And impairment of visual memory was mediated by impaired organizational strategies used during encoding visual information. In conclusion, all the results from this study conducted were consolidated and their implications, the meanings and the limitations of this study as well as suggestions for the future research were discussed.