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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1456691
This article is part of the Research Topic Emotional Impulsivity and Emotion Regulation Deficits as Important Factors in Clinically Challenging Behaviors in Psychiatric Disorders View all 11 articles

The Memory and Affective Flexibility Task (MAFT): A new behavioral tool to assess neurocognitive processes implicated in emotion-related impulsivity and internalizing symptoms

Provisionally accepted
JD Allen JD Allen 1*Matthew V Elliott Matthew V Elliott 1Eivind Haga Ronold Eivind Haga Ronold 2,3Nandini A Rajgopal Nandini A Rajgopal 1Åsa Hammar Åsa Hammar 2,4,5SheriL Johnson SheriL Johnson 1
  • 1 University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States
  • 2 Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
  • 3 Faculty of Medicine, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
  • 4 Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Skane County, Sweden
  • 5 Skåne University Hospital, Lund, Skane County, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Cognitive rigidity and working memory impairment are established features of internalizing syndromes. Growing evidence suggests that deficits in affective control -cognitive control in the context of emotion -may underpin elevated emotion-related impulsivity in various psychiatric disorders. Objective: This study examines two components of affective control (affective flexibility and emotional working memory) as potential neurocognitive processes linking emotion-related impulsivity to internalizing psychopathology. Method: Undergraduate participants (analysis n = 120) completed the Memory and Affective Flexibility Task (MAFT), a novel behavioral assessment designed to assess hot cognition in affective flexibility and emotional working memory performance, alongside self-report measures of impulsivity and symptoms of internalizing disorders. Results: Structural equation modeling suggested that less accurate working memory during neutral trials (cool cognition) was associated with more symptoms of internalizing psychopathology. However, effects of hot working memory and affective flexibility were not significantly related to emotion-related impulsivity or psychopathology scores. Conclusions: Although findings provide no support for the validity of MAFT indices of hot cognition, these results replicate and extend work on the importance of cool working memory and emotion-related impulsivity as correlates of psychopathology.

    Keywords: Affective flexibility, Anxiety, cognitive control, Depression, Emotion Regulation, Emotion-related impulsivity, Internalizing, switching

    Received: 29 Jun 2024; Accepted: 06 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Allen, Elliott, Ronold, Rajgopal, Hammar and Johnson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: JD Allen, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.