Obsessive-compulsive patients have many problems in their processing.

They have a local processing than global processing. They focoused on the local aspect of world.

The purpose of this study was to examine cerebral lateralization of global-local visual processing in obsessive-compulsive patients.

All participants were right handed. Participants completed Edinburgh, the padua, Beck Depression and the Anxiety Inventories and computer task. The repeated measure design of 2(2×3×2) was used to analyze the reaction time data, and the repeated measure design of 2(2×2) was used to analyze the interference data.

Results indicated that OC patients were generally faster in local stimuli processing than global stimuli processing. Also in patient’s group, global stimuli (incongruent) processing contrary to local stimuli (incongruent) processing in the right hemisphere was faster than that of the left hemisphere, a result consistent with previous literature for normal people. In patient’s group, global-to-local interference contrary to local-to-global interference in the right hemisphere was greater than that of the left hemisphere, but in normal’s group, interference pattern in two hemispheres showed no significant differences. In addition, local to global interference in the left hemisphere of normal’s group was greater than that of the patient’s group, but these differences was not significant. Also results showed similar global-to-local interference in normal and patient’s group.

In general, the results of this study show that OC patients are faster in processing of local stimuli than global stimuli. However, this can not be attributed to a dysfunctional hemisphere.