Assessment of working memory abilities in normal hearing individuals with and without misophonia

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate working memory (WM) abilities in normal hearing individuals with and without misophonia using simple and complex WM tasks, and to correlate WM abilities with the severity of misophonia. The data were collected employing a standard group comparison and a non-probability purposive sampling method. The current study comprised 40 participants aged 18–30 years, who were classified into two groups (with and without misophonia) based on the scores obtained in the Misophonia Assessment Questionnaire (MAQ). Simple tasks, including forward and backward digit span, and complex tasks, including operation and reading span, were used to assess WM abilities. WM abilities, measured using simple WM tasks, were comparable between the two groups. Although the operation span scores revealed no statistically significant difference among the complex tasks, there was a statistically significant difference in the reading span scores. The performance of individuals with misophonia remained similar to those without misophonia in simple WM tasks. However, their WM performance becomes poorer as tasks become more demanding.