A person overwhelmed by clutter, struggling with the decision to keep or discard items.

Declutter Your Mind: A New Way to Measure Hoarding Tendencies

Kai Mendoza in Mind & Education September 2025 • 4 min read.

"Is it hoarding or just collecting? Researchers develop a real-time task to better understand and assess hoarding behavior."

Hoarding disorder (HD) is more than just having a messy house. It's characterized by persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. This can lead to significant clutter, distress, and impairment in various areas of life. Understanding the core behaviors of acquiring and discarding is crucial for effective assessment and treatment.

Traditional methods for assessing hoarding rely heavily on self-report questionnaires and clinical interviews. However, individuals with HD may lack insight into the severity of their symptoms, leading to inaccurate reports. This highlights the need for more objective and real-time measures of hoarding tendencies.

Recent research has validated a new computerized task designed to measure acquiring and discarding behaviors in real-time. This task simulates decisions about acquiring and discarding items of varying value, while recording response times as an indicator of decision-making difficulty. This approach offers a promising way to complement existing assessment methods and potentially improve treatment outcomes.

The Acquiring and Discarding Task: How It Works

A person overwhelmed by clutter, struggling with the decision to keep or discard items.

The acquiring and discarding task is a computerized assessment where participants make simulated decisions about saving or discarding virtual items. Here's a breakdown:

During the discarding phase, participants see pictures of household items and decide whether to keep or discard them. They are told to imagine the items belong to them and that they are doing spring cleaning. The catch? They can only keep as many items as would fit in a standard shopping cart.

Acquiring Phase: Participants view pictures of items for sale and decide whether to "take" them home for free, with the limitation of filling only one shopping cart.
Control Task: A control task involving classifying objects as "alive" or "never alive" is included for comparison, ensuring that any observed effects are specific to hoarding-related decisions.
Real-Time Data: The task records which items participants choose to keep or discard (or acquire/leave) and how long it takes them to make each decision (reaction time).
Subjective Ratings: Immediately after both tasks, participants rate their subjective feelings of anxiety/fear and sadness/regret.

By analyzing the items saved/discarded and the response times, researchers gain insights into the individual's decision-making process related to hoarding behaviors. The anxiety and sadness ratings provide insight to subjective feelings associated with each task.

Implications for Treatment and Future Research

This validated task offers a more objective and nuanced way to assess hoarding tendencies, overcoming the limitations of self-report measures. It provides clinicians with a valuable tool to identify specific targets for intervention and track progress during treatment. For example, slower reaction times may indicate difficulty in decision-making, which can be addressed with cognitive strategies.

The research also found that individuals who completed cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) showed improvements in their task performance, suggesting that the task is sensitive to treatment-related changes. This opens up possibilities for using the task as an outcome measure in clinical trials and to personalize treatment approaches.

Future research should focus on replicating these findings in larger and more diverse samples, as well as examining the relationship between task performance and real-world hoarding behaviors. By combining behavioral measures with traditional assessment methods, we can gain a more comprehensive understanding of hoarding disorder and develop more effective interventions to help those who struggle with this challenging condition.

About this Article -

This article was crafted using a human-AI hybrid and collaborative approach. AI assisted our team with initial drafting, research insights, identifying key questions, and image generation. Our human editors guided topic selection, defined the angle, structured the content, ensured factual accuracy and relevance, refined the tone, and conducted thorough editing to deliver helpful, high-quality information.See our About page for more information.

This article is based on research published under:

DOI-LINK: 10.1007/s10862-018-9701-7, Alternate LINK

Title: Validation Of A Behavioral Measure Of Acquiring And Discarding In Hoarding Disorder

Subject: Clinical Psychology

Journal: Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment

Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Authors: Hannah C. Levy, Michael C. Stevens, David F. Tolin

Published: 2018-10-18

Everything You Need To Know

What exactly is the new computerized task described?

The new computerized task is designed to measure acquiring and discarding behaviors in real-time. In the acquiring phase, participants decide whether to take virtual items for free, limited by a shopping cart's capacity. During the discarding phase, participants decide whether to keep or discard virtual household items, also constrained by the shopping cart's size. The task records the items chosen and response times, providing insights into decision-making related to hoarding behaviors. Subjective ratings of feelings are also recorded.

How does Hoarding Disorder differ from simply collecting items, and how does this new task relate to identifying the disorder?

Hoarding Disorder (HD) is characterized by difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, leading to clutter, distress, and impairment. This differs from simple collecting, as the core issue in HD is the inability to let go of items, regardless of their value. The Acquiring and Discarding Task helps identify these tendencies by simulating real-life decisions and measuring how individuals make choices about keeping or discarding items.

Why is the new computerized task important?

The Acquiring and Discarding Task is important because it provides a more objective way to assess hoarding tendencies than traditional methods. Traditional methods rely on self-report questionnaires and clinical interviews, which can be inaccurate due to the lack of insight that individuals with Hoarding Disorder may have about their symptoms. The new computerized task offers a real-time measure, which could improve the understanding and treatment of Hoarding Disorder.

What are the implications of the new computerized task for treating Hoarding Disorder?

The implications for treatment are significant. The Acquiring and Discarding Task helps clinicians identify specific targets for intervention and track progress during treatment. For example, slower reaction times in discarding tasks might indicate decision-making difficulties that can be addressed with cognitive strategies. The inclusion of subjective ratings of anxiety, fear, sadness, and regret also allows clinicians to assess the emotional experience associated with these decisions.

How does the Acquiring and Discarding Task work in detail?

The Acquiring and Discarding Task simulates decisions about acquiring and discarding items, recording which items participants choose to keep or discard, the time taken to make these decisions (reaction time), and subjective ratings of anxiety and sadness. This approach allows researchers to gain insights into an individual's decision-making process and emotional responses related to hoarding behaviors. A control task, classifying objects as 'alive' or 'never alive', ensures that observed effects are specific to hoarding-related decisions, providing a more complete picture of the condition.