(PS2-55) The Role of Emotion Regulation in Predicting Psychophysiological Responses in Individuals with and Without Misophonia

Background: Misophonia is a disorder of decreased tolerance to specific sounds, which elicits negative affective reactions (e.g., irritation, anxiety) and contributes to impairment (Swedo et al., 2022). A small number of studies have found that individuals with misophonia evidence increased skin conductance levels and heart rate variability in response to the trigger (Edelstein et al., 2013; Kumar et al., 2017); however, generalizability is limited by the samples used in these studies. Research in other areas has found high emotional reactivity is related to greater psychophysiological responses (i.e., heartrate, skin conductance; Dixon-Gordon, 2020), and that emotion regulation moderates the relationship between physiology and anger (Puhalla & McCloskey, 2020). To further understand factors contributing to emotional responses in misophonia, the current study investigated the impact of emotion regulation on psychophysiological reactions to misophonia triggers between individuals with and without misophonia. We hypothesized that the misophonia group would evidence greater difficulties in emotion regulation and a stronger psychophysiological response (i.e., skin conductance, heartrate variability [HRV]) to misophonia triggers compared to the control group. Moreover, we predicted worse emotion regulation would account for the differences in psychophysiological response between the groups.

Methods: Data collection is ongoing. The sample includes adults recruited from the local community. The misophonia group (n = 82 screened positive for misophonia based on clinical cutoffs for the Amsterdam Misophonia Scale (AMISO-S; Schroder et al., 2013; M = 12.7, SD = 2.6) and Misophonia Questionnaire (MQ; Wu et al., 2014; Severity M = 9.3, SD = 2.4), whereas the control group (n = 50) reported no misophonia symptoms (AMISO-S M = .5, SD = .9; MQ M = 1.8, SD = 2.3). As part of this study, participants complete self-report measures (e.g., DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004), and HRV and skin conductance are assessed via BIOPAC in response to misophonia trigger videos.

Results: As expected, preliminary analyses revealed that the misophonia group reported significantly greater difficulties with emotion regulation (M = 95.61, SD = 16.53) compared to the control group (M = 84.35, SD = 13.11; t(130) = 4.07, p < .001). Psychophysiological data are being cleaned and will be reported. Mediation analyses using Hayes PROCESS 4.0 in SPSS will be conducted to test the hypothesis that emotion regulation will account for between group differences in psychophysiological responses (i.e., HRV, skin conductance).

Discussion:

This study expands knowledge on misophonia by investigating psychophysiological responses to misophonia triggers and examining factors that may contribute to emotional reactivity in misophonia. If hypotheses are supported, results would suggest that emotion regulation difficulties may be a key factor in the maintenance of misophonia. Such findings would be helpful for informing next steps in examining emotion regulation as a potential treatment target. To date, there are very few clinical trials on treatments for misophonia; therefore, these findings would help advance the development of science-based misophonia interventions.