Compulsive checking is the most common ritual among individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Yet, other than uncertainty, the variables prompting checking are not fully understood. Laboratory studies suggest that task conditions - whether threatening (anxiety-relevant) or neutral, and task type - whether requiring perceptual or reasoning decision-making – may be influential. The purpose of our meta-analysis was to compare OCD participants and healthy controls on experimental tasks involving uncertainty in which a behavioral measure of checking was obtained. Four databases were searched. Twenty-two studies met the inclusion criteria, including 43 conditions comparing 663 OCD participants to 614 healthy controls. Due to the dependent structure of the data a robust variance estimation analysis approach was used. Overall effects were similar for neutral and threatening conditions. However, OCD participants responded with greater checking compared to controls on perceptual tasks, but not on reasoning tasks. Results support previous reports suggesting that OCD checking can be observed in neutral conditions, possibly posing as a risk factor for a checking vicious cycle. In addition, our results support OCD models which focus on checking as stemming from interference with automatic processes and distrust of sensory modalities.

强迫检查是强迫症（OCD）患者中最常见的习惯。但是，除了不确定性之外，尚未完全理解提示检查的变量。实验室研究表明，任务条件（无论是威胁性（焦虑相关）还是中立的）以及任务类型（无论是否需要感知或推理决策）都可能具有影响力。我们的荟萃分析的目的是比较强迫症参与者和健康对照者在涉及不确定性的实验任务中的行为，从而获得检查的行为指标。搜索了四个数据库。22项研究符合纳入标准，包括43种条件，将663名OCD参与者与614名健康对照者进行了比较。由于数据的依赖性结构，因此使用了鲁棒的方差估计分析方法。对于中性和威胁性条件，总体效果相似。但是，与对感性任务的控制相比，与对推理任务的控制相比，与强迫症相比，强迫症参与者的检查能力更高。结果支持以前的报告，表明在中性条件下可以观察到强迫症，这可能是检查恶性循环的危险因素。此外，我们的结果支持OCD模型，该模型的重点是检查由于对自动过程的干扰和对感觉模态的不信任而产生的检查。