摘要：Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic psychiatric disorder that often emerges in early childhood. The primary aim of this study was to examine the validity of creating a hypothesized early onset subtype of the disorder using a global nonclinical sample. The authors looked at 3 key variables: overall OCD symptom severity, the age at OCD onset, and gender. In accordance with previous research, subtyping early onset OCD would be supported if age at onset were a significant predictor of OCD symptom severity, if more males than females developed the disorder in childhood, and if males experienced earlier onset of the disorder and thus more severe symptoms. A sample of 129 parents or caregivers of children with OCD ages 3 to 16 years completed an online OCD survey that was based on the Child Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. The authors found no evidence to suggest that early onset OCD is a distinct subtype of the disorder, but they did find a significant (p .0001) relationship between the overall level of the child’s family’s functioning and the child’s OCD symptom severity. It remains unclear whether functioning simply deteriorates as a child’s OCD worsens, or if family dysfunction is a contributor to the development of more severe child OCD symptoms. The role of family functioning in the etiology of OCD has been largely overlooked and merits further study.
关键词：metacognitive knowledge; learning strategies; judgments of learning; the delayed JOL effect; metacognition
