Body

In a 2026 study, Black et al. investigated the relationships between misophonia severity and affective flexibility, cognitive flexibility, and rumination using the Memory and Affective Flexibility Task (MAFT), a neurocognitive paradigm embedding affective task-switching within an N-back working memory structure, alongside self-report measures in 140 adults. Results implicated two distinct but co-occurring layers of inflexibility: executive-level affective switching deficits captured by the MAFT and broader trait-level cognitive rigidity captured by the DFlex, which were uncorrelated and independently predicted misophonia severity. Rumination contributed a third dimension, linked to cognitive inflexibility and misophonia severity but dissociated from task-based affective flexibility, with mediation analyses showing that roughly 39–43% of the total effect of cognitive inflexibility on misophonia was carried through ruminative tendencies. These converging patterns argue that adequate models of misophonia must incorporate not just sensory sensitivity but self-regulatory processes spanning executive function, trait flexibility, and maladaptive repetitive cognition (Black et al., 2026).