The memory confidence is being studied as the cause of the behavioral checking, a typical symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, along with previously studied automatic negative thoughts such as overwhelming responsibility or perfectionism. I believed that there should be more behavioral checking when a low-confidence in memory is followed by a high sense of responsibility to prevent negative results rather than having only the low confidence in memory about his or her behaviors. In contrast, when one feels little responsibility, he/she thinks he is not highly related to negative results. Thus this research estimated that even if one does not recall oneself''s performance well, he/she would rather not check it again. This research has experimentally verified how memory confidence and responsibility interact and affect behavioral checking. That is, we set a hypothesis of dual-interaction that the effect of memory confidence on behavioral checking differs according to the level of responsibility
The experiment was a completely randomized design with factors of 2 (responsibility - high and low) x 2 (reliability of memory - high and low) and 69 university student participated. We''ve used a dummy pill to measure and analyze the behavior. The first sorting test was conducted after having the participants read passages that either increased or decreased the level of responsibility one felt. After the participants chose from the pill models, their memories were tested by having them check the pills the chose in order. Regardless of the experimenter''s actual test scores, the high memory confidence group was told they had a high score, and the low memory confidence group was told they had a low score. This was to manipulate the memory confidence about the test they just had. Next, the checking behavior frequency during the second pill shape sorting task and the the checking behavior time from the beginning to end of the task were measured.
Analysis of the results indicate that both checking behavior frequency and time display binary interaction, supporting the hypothesis. Specifically, in a condition of low responsibility, a group with low memory confidence and another group with high memory confidence showed no meaningful difference in checking behavior time and frequency. On the other hand, in a condition of high responsibility, a group with low memory confidence showed longer checking behavior time and more frequency than the group with high memory confidence. This result implies that memory confidence can be added to original cognitive theory of compulsion disorder and be expanded.