In (visual) search for a new distraction: the efficiency of a novel attentional deployment versus semantic meaning regulation strategies

Regulation of negative emotions through directed attention in high-trait-anxious women: Evidence from event-related potentials and eye-tracking

Abnormal emotional responses in high-trait-anxious (HTA) individuals may be related to the use of emotion regulation strategies. Directed attention is a substrategy of attention deployment, which has been proven to be effective in regulating individual negative emotions. The present study investigated whether HTA women can effectively utilize directed attention to decrease negative emotions. Two studies were conducted using the same directed attention paradigm, with one focusing on event-related potentials (ERPs) and the other utilizing eye-tracking techniques. Participants viewed negative and neutral pictures and rated their negative emotions experienced during viewing. During directed attention, attention was directed towards highly arousing aspects, less arousing aspects of negative pictures, or less arousing aspects of neutral pictures. In study 1, late positive potentials (LPP) were recorded in 26 HTA and 24 low-trait-anxious (LTA) women. In study 2, the latency of first fixation, the proportion of gaze duration and fixations in the specific area were recorded in 27 HTA and 23 LTA women. Both the HTA and LTA groups revealed a decrease in negative emotional ratings and LPP amplitudes when their attention was directed towards the less arousing aspects of negative pictures. Furthermore, in this condition, the HTA group had a shorter latency of first fixation on highly arousing aspects and a higher proportion of gaze duration on less arousing aspects of negative pictures compared to the LTA group. These results indicate that when confronted with negative pictures, HTA women are able to regulate their emotional responses through directed attention, which may be accompanied by attentional vigilance and avoidance tendencies.

"We can all relate": patient experience of an emotion-oriented group intervention after Acquired Brain Injury

Introduction

Group interventions are carried out routinely across neuropsychological rehabilitation services, to improve understanding of brain injury and aspects of impairment. Treatment provided in a group modality can bring additional perceived benefits, such as co-operative learning. However, there are very few studies which explore patient perceptions and experiences of such interventions. In the present study we investigated the experience of attending a group-based educational intervention for the consequences of acquired brain injury (ABI), which had a strong focus on emotion and emotion regulation.

Methods

Using qualitative semi-structured interviews (approximately 20 minutes), the study explores the lived experience of participating in the seven-session programme, the better to identify the perceived efficacy, salience and value of individual elements. Twenty participants with ABI took part in individual interviews, after completion of the group programme (the Brain Injury Solutions and Emotions Programme, BISEP). The study adopted a descriptive phenomenological philosophy, which focuses on lived experience to explore a phenomenon (i.e. the experience of BISEP). As regards methods, the study employed thematic analysis to cluster experiences into themes of meaning.

Results

Five themes were identified: (1) 'Long term consequences and psychological needs', which related to the persistent nature of direct consequences of injury and adjustment, and how these result in a need for interventions such as BISEP. (2) 'Positive experiences of participating in the programme', referred to participants' overall experience of the programme and valued elements within it. The remaining themes referred to the programme as (3) a social milieu; (4) a place to learn; and (5) a place to promote positive emotional experiences.

Discussion

Similar to previous studies, many people reported high acceptability and perceived value of the group programme, and its role in facilitating adjustment and understanding of injury. Of particular importance was the opportunity to socialise with people who "can all relate", in line with a growing emphasis on social rehabilitation. The findings especially highlight the relevance of emotion-focused group programmes for ABI, promoting emotion regulation, and practical tools that are delivered optimistically. Further implications for practice and future research include to focus on long term rehabilitation, a social milieu, and strategies to support adjustment.

Investigating the effectiveness of instructing emotion regulation flexibility to individuals with low and high anxiety

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Psychopathology has been associated with a deficit in emotion regulation (ER) flexibility - the ability to flexibly utilize ER strategies that are appropriate to situational demands. Yet, whether anxious individuals can be taught ER flexibility, or whether ER flexibility is effective in managing negative affect, remains unknown. We investigated the impact of instructed ER flexibility on emotional responding among individuals with differing levels of anxiety.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Participants (N = 109) were taught two ER strategies (reappraisal, distraction) and randomized to be instructed in either flexible or inflexible ER while viewing images that differed in negative emotional intensity.

RESULTS

When averaged over anxiety, or for participants with low anxiety, negative affect did not differ between conditions. However, among anxious participants, those in the flexible regulatory conditions - those who were instructed to flexibly switch between strategies - reported lower negative affect than those in the inflexible Reappraisal only condition, but not the Distraction only condition. The effectiveness of the two flexible conditions did not significantly differ.

CONCLUSIONS

Anxious individuals benefitted from being instructed in either ER flexibility or distraction. This finding supports literature on the adaptiveness of distraction and provides preliminary evidence linking instructed ER flexibility and improved emotional responding.

Emotional regulation strategies in daily life: the intensity of emotions and regulation choice

Objective

Emotion regulation is an adaptive ability affecting people's physical and mental health, quality of life and functioning. In the present study we focused on the influence of the intensity of experienced emotions on emotion regulation strategies (ERS) that are applied in everyday life.

Methods

For 7 days the participants kept an online diary where every day they described the situation which had aroused their strongest negative emotions. Next, they identified the emotions, their intensity and the type of applied strategies (acceptance vs. reappraisal vs. rumination vs. distraction vs. suppression). The study involved 88 people N = 88, which gives 538 observations.

Results

The obtained results indicate that the intensity of emotions affects the choice of regulation strategies. When the intensity increases, people are more likely to choose the rumination strategy and less likely to choose the reappraisal strategy. However, the expected relationship between the intensity and the number of regulation strategies was not confirmed. In turn, it was gender (male) that turned out to be associated with a greater number of strategies used.

Conclusion

The concern of this research was to look at making regulatory decisions in personally relevant and complex everyday situations. Although the emotions experienced in response to a difficult situation were varied, the intensity of the emotional experience was an important factor determining the choice of a regulation strategy. It indicates that this emotional dimension is a basic and determining aspect in people's regulatory capabilities. These results also indicate that perhaps men in a situation perceived as stressful and worthy of emotional involvement use more regulatory strategies than women. These findings may find an application in all kinds of psychological interventions (e.g., psychotherapy, anger management therapies).

Reduced emotion regulatory selection flexibility in post-traumatic stress disorder: converging performance-based evidence from two PTSD populations

BACKGROUND

Contemporary views of emotion dysregulation in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) highlight reduced ability to flexibly select regulatory strategies according to differing situational demands. However, empirical evidence of reduced regulatory selection flexibility in PTSD is lacking. Multiple studies show that healthy individuals demonstrate regulatory selection flexibility manifested in selecting attentional disengagement regulatory strategies (e.g. distraction) in high-intensity emotional contexts and selecting engagement meaning change strategies (e.g. reappraisal) in low-intensity contexts. Accordingly, we hypothesized that PTSD populations will show reduced regulatory selection flexibility manifested in diminished increase in distraction (over reappraisal) preference as intensity increases from low to high intensity.

METHODS

Study 1 compared student participants with high (N = 22) post-traumatic symptoms (PTS, meeting the clinical cutoff for PTSD) and participants with low (N = 22) post-traumatic symptoms. Study 2 compared PTSD diagnosed women (N = 31) due to childhood sexual abuse and matched non-clinical women (N = 31). In both studies, participants completed a well-established regulatory selection flexibility performance-based paradigm that involves selecting between distraction and reappraisal to regulate negative emotional words of low and high intensity.

RESULTS

Beyond demonstrating adequate psychometric properties, Study 1 confirmed that relative to the low PTS group, the high PTS group presented reduced regulatory selection flexibility (p = 0.01, ŋ²ₚ= 0.14). Study 2 critically extended findings of Study 1, in showing similar reduced regulatory selection flexibility in a diagnosed PTSD population, relative to a non-clinical population (p = 0.002, ŋ²ₚ= 0.114).

CONCLUSIONS

Two studies provide converging evidence for reduced emotion regulatory selection flexibility in two PTSD populations.

Effects of rumination and distraction on inhibition

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Rumination involves fixating on negative content, is associated with biases in inhibitory control, and typically worsens negative mood. In contrast, distraction attempts to engage attentional control and downregulate negative mood. To date studies have not dissociated the detrimental effects of rumination from beneficial effects of distraction on individuals' ability to inhibit irrelevant negative information. Moreover, research has not examined the possible pathways connecting rumination and distraction, negative mood and inhibitory control.

METHODS

To bridge these gaps, we report two studies that assess the effect of induced rumination versus distraction on inhibitory control among high ruminators.

RESULTS

In Study 1 distraction improved inhibition of negative content, whereas induced rumination impaired inhibition of negative content. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and demonstrated that the effect of distraction on inhibition of negative content was mediated by changes in negative mood.

LIMITATIONS

Our studies are limited by small sample sizes and lack of measurement of possible long-term effects.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings provide preliminary evidence for an effect of mood on inhibition and not vice versa, among high ruminators. We discuss theoretical and clinical implications of these findings.

Harnessing the placebo effect to enhance emotion regulation effectiveness and choice

The placebo effect demonstrates how positive expectancies shape the effectiveness of various treatments. Across studies, placebo treatments are interventions (creams, pills, etc.) that are presented to individuals as, and are learned to be, beneficial for them. This study tested whether placebo-induced expectancies can be harnessed to improve individuals' internal emotion regulation attempts. Participants implemented two types of distraction, an emotion regulation strategy involving attentional disengagement, to attenuate fear of pain. In a typical conditioning paradigm, the placebo-distraction was introduced as an effective strategy (verbal suggestion) and was surreptitiously paired with reduced pain (conditioning), whereas the control-distraction was introduced as noneffective and was surreptitiously paired with increased pain. As predicted, we found that during a later test phase, where pain intensity was identical, the placebo-distraction resulted in reduced self-reported fear of pain, relative to the control-distraction. Moreover, we utilized a robust behavioral choice measure, demonstrating increased preferences for the placebo-distraction. We additionally tested whether these effects generalize to a different emotional context of fear of unpleasant pictures. In that context, the placebo-distraction was as effective as the control-distraction, but was substantially preferred. This study demonstrates that the placebo effect can be expanded to include individuals' internal attempts to influence their conditions.

Putting Effort into Emotion Regulation: Manipulating Desirability and Motivational Strength

Although people often want to regulate their emotions, they are sometimes reluctant to invest the necessary effort in doing so. We propose that people could be motivated to invest effort in emotion regulation, by rendering the target emotional state more desirable. Rendering an emotion goal more desirable can motivate people to invest effort in emotion regulation, ultimately facilitating successful emotion regulation. In three studies (N = 452), we show that both inside and outside the lab, rendering calmness more desirable, boosted the motivational strength to increase calmness, increasing the effort people invested to increase calmness, and ultimately made people calmer. This investigation points to the importance of motivational strength as a potential means to promote effort and success in emotion regulation.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00155-0.

Successful implementation of cognitive reappraisal: effects of habit and situational factors

Reappraisal is an adaptive emotion regulation strategy associated with favourable mental health outcomes. It is unclear whether the adaptive outcomes of habitual reappraisal are associated with better implementation of reappraisal when faced with negative affective situations. The current study aimed to examine whether habitual reappraisal predicts the implementation of instructed reappraisal and to evaluate the potential moderating effects of situational factors, namely - emotional intensity and reappraisal affordance. To address this question, 100 participants reported their habitual reappraisal tendency and were asked to imagine themselves in different hypothetical interpersonal situations. Participants rated emotional intensity levels and reappraisal affordance for each situation, followed by instructions to implement reappraisal. Implementation success was measured by self-reported affect pre-and-post-implementation. Results indicated that habitual reappraisal was associated with greater reappraisal implementation success. While higher intensity scores predicted greater reappraisal implementation success, intensity did not moderate the association between habitual reappraisal and reappraisal implementation success. Reappraisal affordance did not predict reappraisal implementation success, nor did it moderate the association between habitual reappraisal and reappraisal implementation success. Our findings suggest that individual-centred factors play a significant role in reappraisal implementation success, while the effects of situation-centred factors demand further investigation.

Habitual adaptive emotion regulation moderates the association between maladaptive emotion regulation and eating disorder symptoms, but not clinical impairment

PURPOSE

Emotion regulation (ER) refers to the processes by which individuals influence the onset, intensity, and duration of emotions. Previous studies have examined the effects of adaptive ER and maladaptive ER in isolation, but growing evidence suggests that they should be studied in conjunction. This study examined the interactions between habitual adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies with eating disorder (ED) symptoms and ED-related clinical impairment.

METHODS

Students (N = 1377) from a Midwestern American university reported ED symptoms, ED-related impairment, habitual adaptive ER (i.e., cognitive reappraisal), and habitual maladaptive ER (i.e., distraction and suppression). Multiple linear regressions were conducted using the PROCESS v3 macro.

RESULTS

The study found that adaptive ER was negatively associated with ED symptoms and ED-related impairment, whereas maladaptive ER was positively associated with both outcome variables. Adaptive ER moderated the association between maladaptive ER and ED symptoms, but not clinical impairment. When habitual adaptive ER was low (< 33.4th percentile), there was no association between maladaptive ER and ED symptoms; however, when habitual adaptive ER was moderate to high (> 33.4th percentile), there was a positive association between frequency of maladaptive ER use and ED symptoms. There was no significant three-way interaction among adaptive ER, maladaptive ER, and probable ED diagnosis, for ED-related impairment or symptoms.

CONCLUSION

Results suggest that irrespective of frequency of maladaptive ER, people with low adaptive ER reported elevated psychopathology. Findings point to the utility of interventions to reduce maladaptive ER and increase adaptive ER in ED populations.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

Level V, cross-sectional descriptive study.

The Effects of Attentional Deployment on Reinterpretation in Depressed Adolescents: Evidence from an Eye-Tracking Study

Background

Individuals with major depression have difficulties employing cognitive reappraisal. Most prior studies have not accounted for attentional deployment, which seems to be involved in this process.

Methods

We investigated the cognitive reappraisal tactic reinterpretation in 20 depressed and 28 healthy youths and assessed regulation success in response to negative pictures via self-report. To investigate attentional deployment during reinterpretation, we applied eye-tracking and manipulated gaze focus by instructing participants to direct their attention towards/away from emotional picture aspects.

Results

Depressed adolescents, compared with healthy youths, had a diminished regulation success when their gaze was focused on emotional aspects. Both depressed and healthy adolescents spent less time fixating on emotional facets of negative pictures when using reinterpretation as compared with simply attending to the pictures.

Conclusions

Results from this study suggest that adolescents with major depression have emotion regulation deficits when being confronted with negative emotional facets, while showing intact overt attentional processes. The findings provide important starting points for future research investigating the role of other factors which might impact on emotion regulation processes in this patient group, such as cognitive control deficits.

Flexible emotion regulatory selection when coping with COVID-19-related threats during quarantine

The COVID-19 pandemic poses significant emotional challenges that individuals need to select how to regulate. The present study directly examined how during the pandemic, healthy individuals select between regulatory strategies to cope with varying COVID-19-related threats, and whether an adaptive flexible regulatory selection pattern will emerge in this unique threatening global context. Accordingly, this two-study investigation tested how healthy individuals during a strict state issued quarantine, behaviorally select to regulate COVID-19-related threats varying in their intensity. Study 1 created and validated an ecologically relevant set of low and high intensity sentences covering major COVID-19 facets that include experiencing physical symptoms, infection threats, and social and economic consequences. Study 2 examined the influence of the intensity of these COVID-19-related threats, on behavioral regulatory selection choices between disengagement via attentional distraction and engagement via reappraisal. Confirming a flexible regulatory selection conception, healthy individuals showed strong choice preference for engagement reappraisal when regulating low intensity COVID-19-related threats, but showed strong choice preference for disengagement distraction when regulating high intensity COVID-19-related threats. These findings support the importance of regulatory selection flexibility for psychological resilience during a major global crisis.

Acting against your own interests: The tension between emotion regulation preference and efficacy and its implications for individuals with depressive symptoms

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to compare individuals' strategy choices in low and high intensity conditions and the actual efficacy of these strategies; second, to assess whether and how perceived intensity levels of aversive situations moderate the relationship between depressive symptoms and a strategies' efficacy. In Experiment 1A (N = 58), we replicated previous results, showing that individuals prefer distraction in high- and reappraisal in low-intensity conditions, irrespective of depressive symptom levels. Experiment 1B (N = 50) assessed the efficacy of distraction and reappraisal strategies in aversive conditions with low and high intensity. Contrary to our prediction, reappraisal was more effective than distraction, independent of the intensity of the aversive conditions. In Experiment 2 (N = 113), we tested the interactive relationship between perceived intensity levels and depression on the relative effectiveness of reappraisal and distraction. We found that while in perceived low-intensity situations the advantage of distraction over reappraisal increased as depressive symptoms increased, no such relationship was found in high-intensity situations. The results suggest that while all individuals prefer to apply reappraisal in both low- and high-intensity conditions, for those with high level of depressive symptoms, such a preference acts against their own interests. The study highlights the need to distinguish between emotion regulation preferences and their actual efficacy, while illuminating possible implications for individuals with depressive symptoms.

This time it's personal: reappraisal after acquired brain injury

Reappraisal is a widely investigated emotion regulation strategy, often impaired in those with acquired brain injury (ABI). Little is known, however, about the tools to measure this capacity in patients, who may find traditional reappraisal tasks difficult. Fifty-five participants with ABI, and thirty-five healthy controls (HCs), completed reappraisal tasks with personal and impersonal emotion elicitation components, questionnaires measuring reappraisal (the ERQ-CA), and neuropsychological assessment. The main findings demonstrated that both groups produced more reappraisals, and rated their reappraisal ideas as more effective for personal stimuli. The ABI group were significantly faster to generate reappraisals for personal, compared to impersonal, stimuli. Yet, participants with ABI performed worse than HCs on the majority of reappraisal components, across both reappraisal tasks. Results of regression analyses revealed significant relationships between certain measures of cognitive control and certain reappraisal components, which varied for the personal and impersonal reappraisal task. Notably, while inhibition predicted aspects of reappraisal in both the ABI and HC group, working memory was only related to reappraisal in participants with ABI. The study suggests that personal context plays a key role in reappraisal, and proposes a model to better understand the role of cognitive control across the reappraisal process.

The role of attentional deployment during distancing in adolescents with major depression

Individuals with major depression (MD) show deficits in cognitive reappraisal. It is yet unexplored how the act of directing visual attention away from/towards emotional aspects impacts on cognitive reappraisal in MD. Thus, we examined the role of attentional deployment during cognitive reappraisal (specifially during distancing) in adolescent MD. 36 MD adolescents and 37 healthy controls (12-18 years) performed a cognitive reappraisal task during which they a) down-regulated self-reported negative affective responses to negative pictures via distancing, or b) simply attended to the pictures. During the task, attentional focus was systematically varied by directing participants' gaze to emotional vs. non-emotional picture aspects. The validity of this experimental manipulation was checked by continuous eye-tracking during the task. Across groups and gaze focus conditions, distancing diminished negative affective responses to the pictures. Regulation success significantly differed between groups dependent on gaze focus: MD adolescents showed relatively less regulation success than controls in the emotional gaze focus condition, while the reverse was true for the non-emotional gaze focus condition. The results suggest that in MD adolescents, an emotional context might interfere with emotion regulatory aims. The findings can provide an important starting point for the development of innovative training regimes that target deficient reappraisal processes in adolescents suffering from MD.

Linguistic Shifts: A Relatively Effortless Route to Emotion Regulation?

Prior research indicates that psychological distance facilitates emotion regulation. Here, we propose that the ability to transcend one’s immersed perspective may be hidden in plain sight, within the very structure of language. We review evidence regarding two linguistic mechanisms, distanced self-talk and generic “you,” that promote emotion regulation by allowing speakers to shift from an immersed to a more distanced perspective through the words they use to reflect on the self (e.g., shifting from “I” to their own name or other non-first-person-singular pronouns). We conclude by suggesting that these linguistic shifts occur relatively seamlessly and thus may provide a less effortful route to emotion regulation.

Neural processing of emotional-intensity predicts emotion regulation choice

Emotional-intensity is a core characteristic of affective events that strongly determines how individuals choose to regulate their emotions. Our conceptual framework suggests that in high emotional-intensity situations, individuals prefer to disengage attention using distraction, which can more effectively block highly potent emotional information, as compared with engagement reappraisal, which is preferred in low emotional-intensity. However, existing supporting evidence remains indirect because prior intensity categorization of emotional stimuli was based on subjective measures that are potentially biased and only represent the endpoint of emotional-intensity processing. Accordingly, this study provides the first direct evidence for the role of online emotional-intensity processing in predicting behavioral regulatory-choices. Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials, we evaluated online neural processing of stimuli's emotional-intensity (late positive potential, LPP) prior to regulatory-choices between distraction and reappraisal. Results showed that enhanced neural processing of intensity (enhanced LPP amplitudes) uniquely predicted (above subjective measures of intensity) increased tendency to subsequently choose distraction over reappraisal. Additionally, regulatory-choices led to adaptive consequences, demonstrated in finding that actual implementation of distraction relative to reappraisal-choice resulted in stronger attenuation of LPPs and self-reported arousal.

Emotional intensity influences pre-implementation and implementation of distraction and reappraisal

Although emotional intensity powerfully challenges regulatory strategies, its influence remains largely unexplored in affective-neuroscience. Accordingly, the present study addressed the moderating role of emotional intensity in two regulatory stages--implementation (during regulation) and pre-implementation (prior to regulation), of two major cognitive regulatory strategies--distraction and reappraisal. According to our framework, because distraction implementation involves early attentional disengagement from emotional information before it gathers force, in high-intensity it should be more effective in the short-term, relative to reappraisal, which modulates emotional processing only at a late semantic meaning phase. Supporting findings showed that in high (but not low) intensity, distraction implementation resulted in stronger modulation of negative experience, reduced neural emotional processing (centro-parietal late positive potential, LPP), with suggestive evidence for less cognitive effort (frontal-LPP), relative to reappraisal. Related pre-implementation findings confirmed that anticipating regulation of high-intensity stimuli resulted in distraction (over reappraisal) preference. In contrast, anticipating regulation of low-intensity stimuli resulted in reappraisal (over distraction) preference, which is most beneficial for long-term adaptation. Furthermore, anticipating cognitively demanding regulation, either in cases of regulating counter to these preferences or via the more effortful strategy of reappraisal, enhanced neural attentional resource allocation (Stimulus Preceding Negativity). Broad implications are discussed.