Psychology Assignment related to OCD and Information systems

[mobius]

For a psychology assignment, I am supposed to choose a psychological question related to human use of an information system. Examples include "Why do people forget passwords" and " What makes people stay up all night playing video games".
I was thinking of the following question :
"How do OCD affected individuals interact with Information Systems, and how can the system identify such behavior and act accordingly".

For example, on Facebook I tend to carry out some actions repetitively and also look for perfectionism and symmetry in the way boxes in my profile are arranged. I never leave any notification, message unread and I hate to see new friend suggestions popping up in my homepage. Similarly, on GMail, I hate to leave any mail left unread, including in spam, drafts and in the trash. I was wondering if it is possible to map behavioral therapy procedures onto such Information systems which can intelligently detect OCD-type behavior and make such activities easier for such individuals to carry out, and possible also implement the behavioral techniques inherently into their system and help users overcoming their compulsions.

This was just an initial idea that I was having and I thought it might be best to take all your inputs on the possibility and efficacy of such systems. Please let me know the type of compulsions you have to carry out in any Information system and the kinds of additions you might want to see in such systems to aid people afflicted with OCD.


P.S: Though this is an interesting question for us to ponder, I wasn't sure if it warrants enough importance to be posted on here. If that is the case, please let me know and I'll move this post under another appropriate topic. Thanks.

 

[getbornagain]

I have no idea what you're trying to prove. OCD is different for everyone, but usually it goes like this: Idea causes anxiety, individual dwells on idea, compulsion temporarily relieves anxiety, idea returns shortly, repeat. How do you plan on "mapping" this?

 

[durda_dan]

i agree with getbornagain, it seems a little difficult to... i don't know, Track this as a normal habbit for everyone, because i have OCD and i don't loook for symetry.

 

[mobius]

Very true. I was thinking about a system that first detects a user's repetitive actions timed over a particular timespan and if it can identify a particular pattern of any sort, it can go to the next level and check if the user shows other kinds of compulsions/repetitiveness. These actions can then be stored in a central database which is globally updated and the system can thus 'learn' from user actions and build a database good enough to spot such behavior. Since each individual has their own ways to carry out their compulsions, it is important for the system to identify any kind of repetitive action intelligently. Does this sound reasonable?

 

[getbornagain]

Maybe that would work for ritual OCD (hand-washing, lock checking, etc.) but it would never work for Purely Obsessional OCD (sexual, violent, religious obsessions) because various people, pictures, objects, and situations in the real world trigger spikes in the OCD mind. You can be attacked all day every day or you can go a period of time with no spikes. Each day is different and there is no telling when the next spike will come due to the unpredictibility of what is happening around us.