DOI: 10.5061/dryad.gtht76hv4
title: Using a standardized sound set to help characterize misophonia: The international affective digitized sounds

description: 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.
description: Group differences in sound ratings were examined using a two-way,
 mixed analysis of covariance (2 groups x 3 sound types, where “group”
 corresponds to participants with misophonia or controls, and “sound type”
 refers to positive, negative, or neutral sounds) on four dependent
 variables (ratings of valence, arousal, similarity, and avoidance). When
 statistically significant interactions were observed for sound type,
 pairwise comparisons were used to determine group differences on each
 dependent variable, as well as mean differences between sound type on each
 dependent variable. All analyses were conducted using
 IBM SPSS27 statistical software. The first step in the data analytic plan
 included cleaning and screening the dataset by (a) inspecting all
 variables for data entry errors (none were observed), and (b) examining
 the normality of distributions across study variables. Next, bivariate
 correlations were explored to examine the relationships among variables
 and determine whether it would be appropriate to use any covariates. The
 Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), the Affect Intensity Measure
 (AIM), and gender were all found to significantly correlate with results
 and were initially included as covariates. Skewness and kurtosis levels
 did not exceed acceptable ranges (skewness &lt; 2, kurtosis &lt;
 4).28 Finally, we ranked sounds according to a
 composite Z-score calculated by the sum of the Z scores from mean group
 differences on each sound for each dependent variable and listed the
 entire ranked stimuli as “IADS-M” sounds (See Table 2). Sounds listed
 first (e.g., writing, whistling) reflect the sounds that most
 differentiate individuals with misophonia from controls. Researchers using
 the IADS-M can determine how many sounds to include in future
 studies. Detailed methods and procedures can be found
 in the published manuscript.
description: # Using a standardized sound set to help characterize misophonia: The
 international affective digitized sounds
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kh18932fd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kh18932fd) ## Description of the data and file structure MQincluded is the group variable. MQincluded=1 describes all participants who meet misophonia criteria and were included in the dataset. MQincluded=0 describes healthy controls. All variable names for the measures have descriptors in the "label" column of SPSS. Average ratings for the dependent variables are found at the end of the variable view in SPSS, as well as PANAS positive and negative scores and the AIM total score. ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from the following sources: * Amazon Mechanical Turk ## Code/Software SPSS syntax is included with the data upload.