Using a standardized sound set to help characterize misophonia: The international affective digitized sounds

Misophonia is a condition characterized by negative affect, intolerance,
and functional impairment in response to particular repetitive sounds
usually made by others (e.g., chewing, sniffing, pen tapping) and
associated stimuli. To date, researchers have largely studied misophonia
using self-report measures. As the field is quickly expanding, assessment
approaches need to advance to include more objective measures capable of
differentiating those with and without misophonia. Although several
studies have used sounds as experimental stimuli, few have used
standardized stimuli sets with demonstrated reliability or validity. To
conduct rigorous research to better understand misophonia, it is important
to have an easily accessible, standardized set of acoustic stimuli for use
across studies. Accordingly, in the present study, the International
Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-2), developed by Bradley and Lang [1],
were used to determine whether participants with misophonia responded to
certain standardized sounds differently than a control group. Participants
were 377 adults (132 participants with misophonia and 245 controls)
recruited from an online platform to complete several questionnaires and
respond to four probes (arousal, valence, similarity to personally
relevant aversive sounds, and sound avoidance) in response to normed
pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral IADS-2 sounds. Findings indicated that
compared to controls, participants with high misophonia symptoms rated
pleasant and neutral sounds as significantly more (a) arousing and similar
to trigger sounds in their everyday life, (b) unpleasant, and (c) likely
to be avoided in everyday life. For future scientific and clinical
innovation, we include a ranked list of IADS-2 stimuli differentiating
responses in those with and without misophonia, which we call the IADS-M.