A Study On The Symptoms Of Phonophobia And Its Psychophysiological Mechanism In A Sample Of Chinese Communities

The conceptualization of misophonia is initially identified by audiologists,which is characterized by selective sound sensitivity,then,it has aroused broad interests among psychological researchers.In recent years,researchers have gained a better understanding of epidemiology,phenomenology,etiology and effective treatments of misophonia,but three shortcomings or problems should be further discussed:Firstly,the effectiveness of measurement tool for misophonia has not be verified.Secondly,the incidence and psychological mechanism of misophonia need to be confirmed in different sample groups.Thirdly,multiple physiological indicators and emotional contents should be added to explore the psychological mechanism of misophonia.The first study was to test the effectiveness of Misophonia Questionaire.Misophonia Questionnaire(MQ)was measured in 316 community samples.At the same time,Adult Sensory Questionnair(ASQ),Obsessive Compulsive Inventory-Revised(OCI-R)and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21(DASS-21)were used to test the standard validity of MQ,and 175 of them were selected for MQ retest one week later.SPSS20.0 was used for descriptive analysis and correlation analysis,and Mplus7.4 was used for confirmatory factor analysis.The results showed that:(1)The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of MQ total and subscale was 0.87-0.91,the retest reliability was 0.51-0.63,and the average correlation coefficient between entries was between 0.37-0.49.(2)MQ total score was positively correlated with ASQ total score,OCI-R total score,DASS-anxiety score and DASS-depression score.(3)The result of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the fitting index of MQ scale two-factor structure was good.The second study was to investigate the incidence of misophonia in Chinese community samples and explore the clinical factors as well as psychological mechanism of misophonia.Misophonia Questionnaire(MQ),Adult Sensory Questionnair(ASQ),Obsessive Compulsive Inventory-Revised(OCI-R),Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21(DASS-21),the Chinese Version of Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire(OBQ-44),Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale(FMPS),and Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-27(IUS-27)were tested on 316 community samples from study 1.SPSS20.0 was used for descriptive analysis,independent sample T test,one-way anova,non-parametric test,correlation analysis and multiple stepwise regression analysis,meanwhile,PROCESS program was used to test mediation models.The results showed that:(1)The proportion of misophonia with clinical significance in Chinese community samples was about 8%.(2)There was a difference in the severity of misophonia in demographic variables,that is,the youth group has a higher level of misophonia severity than the middle-aged group;the severity level of misophonia was higher in higher educated individuals than in lower educated individuals.Individuals who engage in mental labor experience higher levels of misophonia severity than those who engage in manual labor.(3)The severity of misophonia was associated with impairment across work/study,social and family domains.(4)The severity of misophonia was significantly associated with low to moderate levels of anger,obsessive-compulsive disorder,anxiety,depression and sensory sensitivity.(5)There was no significant correlation between the severity of misophonia and the total score of compulsive belief;the severity of misophonia was significantly weakly to moderately correlated with total score of perfectionism,negative perfectionism,doubt of action,personal standard and fear of error.Intolerance of uncertainty was moderately associated with the severity of misophonia.(6)Anxiety completely mediated the relationship between misophonia symptoms and anger.(7)Compulsive behavior partially mediated the relationship between anxiety and the severity of misophonia.(8)Intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety partially mediated the relationship between the total scores of misophonia and anger.The third study with biofeedback instrument was to explore the emotional and physiological responses of community adults with different severity of misophonia when faced with stimuli triggered by different sensory channels.100 subjects were selected from the first study and 97 valid subjects were collected.SPSS20.0 was used for descriptive analysis and repeated measurement analysis of variance.The results showed that:(1)The relationship for intensity of disgust and irritability experienced by adults with higher severity of misophonia facing three sensory channel triggers was as follows: auditory channel>audio-visual channel>visual channel.(2)When adults in the community were faced with different sensory channel trigger stimuli,there was no significant difference in the intensity of six kinds of emotional experience under the auditory channel and audio-visual channel trigger stimuli,but all of them were significantly higher than the emotional experience intensity under the visual channeltrigger stimuli.(3)When adults in the community were exposed to different sensory channel trigger stimuli,the mean skin resistance and heart rate did not have significant differences under the visual channel and audio-visual channel trigger stimuli,but both were significantly lower than the mean skin resistance and heart rate under the auditory channel trigger stimuli.This paper is one of the few empirical studies on misophonia.On the one hand,the exploration for causes and pathomechanism of misophonia in Chinese community samples not only verified and improved mechanism model of misophonia,but also facilitated the development of effective treatment for misophonia.On the other hand,the study on phenomenology of misophonia can provide evidences for its diagnosis and classification.The results enriched our understanding of misophonia both theoretically and empirically.Subsequent studies can use other technologies such as fMRI or ERP to further explore the pathophysiology of misophonia in clinical samples.At the same time,it is necessary to consider gender balance to verify research results of this paper in different sample groups combining with multiple methods(interview,questionnaire measurement,experiment,physiological indicators).