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Emotion regulation; Distraction; Reappraisal; Late positive potential; Electromyography
Abstract:
Theoretical accounts of emotion regulation (ER) discriminate various cognitive strategies to voluntarily modify emotional states. Amongst these,
attentional deployment (i.e. distraction) and cognitive change (i.e. reappraisal), have been shown to successfully down-regulate emotions.
Neuroimaging studies found that both strategies differentially engage neural structures associated with selective attention, working memory and
cognitive control. The aim of this study was to further delineate similarities and differences between the ER strategies reappraisal and distraction
by investigating their temporal brain dynamics using event-related potentials (ERPs) and their patterns of facial expressive behavior. Twenty-one
participants completed an ER experiment in which they had to either passively view positive, neutral and negative pictures, reinterpret them to
down-regulate affective responses (reappraisal), or solve a concurrently presented mathematical equation (distraction). Results demonstrate the
efficacy of both strategies in the subjective control of emotion, accompanied by reductions of facial expressive activity (Corrugator supercilii and
Zygomaticus major). ERP results indicated that distraction, compared with reappraisal, yielded a stronger and earlier attenuation of the late positive
potential (LPP) magnitude for negative pictures. For positive pictures, only distraction but not reappraisal had significant effect on LPP attenuation. The
results support the process model of ER, separating subtypes of cognitive strategies based on their specific time course.
