Body

Misophonia severity linked to greater emotional switch costs, attributed jointly to reconfiguration difficulty and task-set inertia rather than either alone.

Black et al. (2026) examined affective switching costs in misophonia through the lens of two complementary theories of task-switching, finding that individuals with higher misophonia severity showed reduced accuracy on emotionally valenced switch trials. Task-Set Reconfiguration theory suggests these costs reflect impaired top-down cognitive control during the reconfiguration of a new emotional task set, consistent with documented cognitive control deficits in misophonia when confronted with triggers. Task-Set Inertia theory alternatively frames the costs as residual activation from prior task sets interfering with the transition to an emotional task, suggesting misophonic individuals may be especially susceptible to carryover interference during affective switching. The authors treat these accounts as mutually inclusive rather than competing, arguing that both reconfiguration difficulty and inertia-driven interference likely jointly contribute to the elevated emotion switch costs observed in this population (Black et al., 2026).