From distraction to mindfulness: Psychological and neural mechanisms of attention strategies in self-regulation

Abstract

The current chapter examines attention strategies that may facilitate self-regulation. In particular, we focus on the attention strategies of distraction and mindfulness. By distraction, we mean shifting attention from the original object of attention onto a different focal object. Mindfulness, on the other hand, implies regulating the focus and the quality of one’s attention. This implies paying attention to the focal object, but at the same time observing one’s own thoughts and experiences and seeing them as mere mental events. We discuss evidence that distraction and mindfulness modulate the impact of affective information on thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Whereas the two strategies are seemingly opposing in nature, we have found that both distraction and mindfulness can undermine intrusive thinking patterns in response to affective information that normally result in more impulsive behavior. We show how the effectiveness of these strategies is reflected not only in behavioral measures of self-regulation success but in neurophysiological indices as well. Distraction seems to involve the increased engagement of prefrontal brain regions for task-related processing, whereas mindfulness training may affect the connectivity between control and affective brain regions. More broadly speaking, the present chapter shows that combining behavioral and neuroscience measures can be a particularly fruitful approach in understanding how attention strategies impact self-regulation.