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Decreased Sound Tolerance Disorders (Hyperacusis and Misophonia) in Cognitively Able Autistic Adults II: Demographic and Clinical Correlates
No full textBackground: Between 50–70% of autistic individuals report clinically significant decreased sound tolerance (DST; i.e., difficulty tolerating sound in one’s environment) at some point in their lives. DST in autism comprises multiple distinct disorders, including hyperacusis (the perception of moderate-intensity sounds as excessively loud or physically painful) and misophonia (a neuropsychiatric condition in which specific “trigger” sounds cause excessive emotional reactions such as anger, irritation, and disgust), although few studies to date have distinguished these conditions from one another or studied their correlates independently.
Methods: A sample of 936 independent autistic adults was recruited from the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge cohort. Hyperacusis and misophonia case status were operationalized using self-report survey items reflecting DST symptom endorsement and functional impairment. Univariate and multivariate Bayesian models were then used to examine the demographic and clinical correlates of each DST diagnosis (both alone and independently of the other condition) in the autistic adult population.
Results: Hyperacusis and misophonia were strongly correlated. Accordingly, all significant correlates in univariate analyses were found to associate with both conditions. In multivariate analyses (including control for depression and generalized anxiety, which strongly related to DST symptoms), both disorders were independently associated with female sex; increased autistic traits, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, and phonophobia symptoms; and increased likelihood of seeking medical care for DST. Most other significant correlates (primarily hearing-related or neurological symptoms/disorders) were found to be associated only with hyperacusis rather than misophonia, although misophonia was uniquely associated with anger symptoms and identification as a gender minority.
Conclusion: Both hyperacusis and misophonia explain substantial variance in clinical outcomes of interest in the autistic population and demonstrate utility as additional diagnoses for autistic adults who experience debilitating DST symptoms within clinical practice
An Analysis of Reporting Quality in Cross-Sectional Studies on Cyberchondria: A Meta-Research Study
No full textCyberchondria refers to the excessive and repetitive online searching of health-related information, often associated with health anxiety (Fergus, 2013). It is marked by excessive online health searches causing increased anxiety and has recently gained attention. Most studies are cross-sectional, focusing on prevalence and risk factors, but the quality of reporting remains underexplored. Cyberchondria is not classified as a formal diagnosis in either the International Classification of Diseases and Health Problems (ICD-11) or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) yet, since there are several overlaps with existing disorders (such as health anxiety and generalised anxiety disorder), lack of clinical consensus, as well as research limitations. This review aims to identify reporting and content characteristics of quantitative cyberchondria studies and offer recommendations to enhance transparency and reproducibility in future research. A literature search will be conducted using the term "cyberchondria" across PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar to identify cross-sectional studies. The extraction sheet will be developed using the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal tool categories. Current cyberchondria research lacks sufficient evidence for generalizing findings to a broader population. Pre-registered replications and longitudinal studies are needed to strengthen existing conclusions. Future research can use this review's findings to tailor their aims and protocols
Truth discernment may hot help to overcome misinformation
No full textScientists increasingly assess interventions against misinformation mainly via truth discernment. However, pursuing truth discernment may not be sufficiently beneficial to society if interventions do not improve behaviour and other outcomes
Policies in sequential decision-making
No full textHumans often need to make decisions that take future situations into account. This kind of sequential choice entails a trade-off between the present and the future, where decision-makers have to decide to accept or reject the currently available option. The approach-avoidance conflict, on the other hand, is a frequently used framework in psychology to study the behavioral trade-off regarding appetitive and aversive stimuli. This study investigates the influence of approach and avoidance conditions on sequential choice. Therefore, we developed experimental conditions in which participants should either approach or avoid environmental dangers in order to optimize their behavior. The main objective is to evaluate meta-decision making strategies under ecologically valid conditions. To accomplish this, we developed a game-like foraging paradigm with probabilistic outcomes where people could use different types of decision rules (or policies). While some policies would only account for one variable of our game environment, others would account for different variables depending on the time-point and the situation. Model comparisons allowed us to test whether participants would rely on a rather myopic/heuristic or a forward-looking policy. We then tested whether policies differed depending on our task’s approach and avoidance condition. Our findings suggest that people generally use a myopic strategy in sequential decision-making. However, we observe increased optimal behavior in situations where the environment bears higher dangers that should be avoided. We suspect the underlying mechanisms to be linked to an internal energetic trade-off between efficient and accurate meta-decision making depending on the risks imposed by the environment
Supplementary data - Neuromuscular fatigue induced by the combined application of neuromuscular electrical stimulation and muscle lengthening
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