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findings suggest that Misophonia mechanisms are not specific to triggers

In a 2026 study, Black et al. investigated the relationships between misophonia severity and affective flexibility, cognitive flexibility, and rumination, employing the Memory and Affective Flexibility Task (MAFT), a novel neurocognitive paradigm that embeds affective task-switching demands within an N-back working memory structure using emotionally valenced images, alongside a battery of self-report measures in a sample of 140 adults. Reduced switch accuracy on the MAFT was observed in response to emotionally valenced images unrelated to auditory triggers, indicating that affective switching difficulties in misophonia generalize beyond the misophonic trigger context. Cognitive inflexibility as measured by the DFlex was broadly associated with misophonia severity across multiple subscales, extending the pattern into trait-level, context-general rigidity. All three rumination subtypes (perseverative thinking, brooding, anger rumination) predicted misophonia severity above and beyond anxiety, depression, and hyperacusis, and these ruminative tendencies were measured as general cognitive styles rather than misophonia-specific ones. Taken together, the data support the view that misophonia involves a broader cognitive-affective profile of rigidity and perseverative responding, not simply a conditioned reaction to a specific class of stimuli (Black et al., 2026).