Investigating Sound-Specific Attention Control in Mild to Moderate Misophonia Using a Modified Attention Network Test

Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that attentional differences might be a core mechanism of misophonia, a condition characterised by negative psychological responses to bodily and/or repetitive sounds. However, it is unclear whether aberrant attentional processing affects people with misophonia (PwM) globally or only in the context of symptom provocation. Moreover, it is unclear whether attentional differences also exist for those with less severe misophonia levels. Here, a modified Attention Network Test with misophonic (e.g., chewing), aversive (e.g., baby crying), and neutral (e.g., birds singing) sounds was administered to explore whether mild/moderate misophonics have differing alerting, orienting, and executive control responses when listening to misophonia sounds compared to other types of sounds, as well as in comparison to a control group. Additionally, we explored whether the presence of specific types of triggers impacted attentional processing. In doing so, our results show a different pattern of alerting and orienting behaviour in PwM compared to the control group. Furthermore, PwM showed less efficient executive control upon hearing misophonia-eliciting sounds compared to aversive sounds. We propose that this difference in processing between groups reflects unpredictable threats in PwM. However, both a facilitation and distracting effect of the sound are possible explanations, which require further investigation.