Clearing the mind: A working memory model of distraction from negative mood.

“Notably, the present research focused on the regulation of negative mood, because of its relevance to understanding mood disorders like chronic anxiety and depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) and because regulation of negative mood has received most attention in the emotion regulation literature (Gross, 1998).”

“Indeed, many individuals engage in prolonged negative ruminations when they would prefer to entertain more pleasant thoughts (Koole, Smeets, van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 1999; Kuhl, 1994; Martin & Tesser, 1996).”

“Purposeful attentional allocation towards neutral relative to unpleasant stimuli is akin to the concept of ‘distraction’ (Sheppes & Meiran, 2008; van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“For instance, after a romantic break-up, people may focus their attention on a neutral activity (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007 ), cognitively reframe the situation (Tugade & Frederickson, 2004 ), write about their feelings (Pennebaker & Chung, 2007 ), or eat away at tasty but fattening foods (Tice, Bratslavsky, & Baumeiste…”

“A classic early selection strategy is distraction, which involves disengaging attention from emotional processing before it is represented in working memory by producing neutral thoughts that are independent from and not in conflict with emotional information (e.g., Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“Based on Baddeley (2003; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007), we assumed that the two-digit task taxed WMC less than the five-digit task and that under the five-digit task WMC would not be fully occupied.”

“This attentional demand minimizes anxiety by blocking intrusive thoughts (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“The subjects were asked to solve 20 arithmetic problems between two blocks to prevent carry-over effects of valence across blocks [79].”

“Distraction is known to be a very efficient emotion regulation strategy (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1993; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“In line with this, behavioral research suggests that task load can still modulate emotional processing when the task succeeds, rather than accompanies the emotional stimulus (Erber and Tesser, 1992; Gerin et al., 2006; Glynn et al., 2002; Van Dillen and Koole, 2007).”

“Access to the global workspace of the mind makes a big difference, because any mental content that achieves privileged access to working memory has the potential to broadcast its message to a wide range of participating systems, including those that generate thoughts, full-blown emotions, and intentional behaviors (Ba…”

“Recently, an interesting line of research emerged that studies the relation between cognitive distraction and the experience of negative feelings (e.g., Silvert et al., 2007; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“Therefore, future work may wish to examine whether a visuospatial working memory task would also reduce the LPP elicited by task-irrelevant pictures and, if so, whether anxiety would attenuate this effect (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“…that increasing task load (Beatty, 1986; Beatty & Kahneman, 1966; Hess & Polt, 1964; Kuchinke et al., 2007; Moresi et al., 2008; Prehn et al., 2008, 2011) and cognitive emotion regulation (Johnstone et al., 2007; Urry et al., 2006, 2009; van Reekum et al., 2007) lead to pupil size increases.”

“A classic early selection strategy is distraction, which involves producing neutral thoughts that are independent from and not in conflict with emotional information (e.g., van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Thiruchselvam et al., 2011).”

“…complex and difficult tasks, which make notable demands on working memory, are the most effective in improving experimentally induced dysphoria (van Dillen & Koole, 2007) As already noted, studies of adults have documented that cognitive responses involving refocusing attention away from…”

“Iterative hedonic processing may lead to maintenance or even amplification of hedonic responses if attention is continuously allocated to the affective information and no regulatory process is recruited (Kavanagh et al., 2005; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“By loading WM with tasks demanding effortful cognitive processing, mood-congruent processing can be prevented and thereby result in distraction from negative moods (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“Previous studies have shown that subtracting 7 s requires more cognitive effort and is also more disengaging from emotional contents than subtracting 2 s (e.g., Erber & Tesser, 1992; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“As van Dillen and Koole (2007) have argued, such tasks distract us by loading our working memory and “preventing mood-congruent processing” (p. 715).”

“For example, working memory loads reduce craving in response to tempting foods (Van Dillen, Papies & Hofmann, in submission)—consistent with their impact on emotional responses more generally (Van Dillen, Heslenfeld & Koole, 2009; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“Another unanswered question is whether and how body posture interacts with other deliberate forms of emotion regulation, such as distraction (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007), or expressive suppression (Butler et al., 2003).”

“…felt affective reactions could be reduced by asking people to engage in cognitively demanding tasks that would compete for these mental resources (Erber and Tesser, 1992; Rusting and Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998; Gerin et al., 2006; Joormann et al., 2007; Van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Kron et al., 2010).”

“…of studies suggesting that in order for attentional deployment from negative information to be successful, it must occupy enough working memory capacity so that insufficient resources are available for processing of negative information (e.g. Van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Van Dillen et al., 2009).”

“For instance, negative stimuli induce less negative feeling when the pictures are followed by a task that makes high rather than low demands on working memory (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“Specifically, one central disengagement regulatory strategy is distraction, that involves disengaging from emotional contents by producing unrelated neutral thoughts at an early attentional deployment stage (Van Dillen and Koole, 2007).”

“This explanation would be consistent with the working memory model developed by van Dillen and Koole (2007) but requires further investigation.”

“Research suggests that the subjective experience of emotions requires mental resources (Kron, Schul, Cohen & Hassin, 2010; Van Dillen, Heslenfeld, & Koole, 2009; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“Interestingly, follow-up research has shown that distraction after exposure to emotion-evoking stimuli can attenuate negative feelings [46].”

“Most of prior emotion regulation studies focused on conscious, deliberative and resource-demanding strategies, such as strategic reappraisal (Gross, 2001), effortful distraction (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007) and suppression of emotional responses (Butler et al., 2003).”

“Counting ceiling tiles (Nix, Watson, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 1995), performing math equations (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007), or playing a game of Tetris (Holmes, James, Coode-Bate, & Deeprose, 2009), for example, may help people subdue their negative emotions.”

“An additional advantage is that it does not requireworkingmemory load, which has been shown to inhibit negative emotional processing (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007; Witthöft et al., 2011).”

“Nigro and Neisser found that the perspective of memory is influenced by emotional content, which spurred a growing body of research with focus on the memory perspective and its relationships with emotional regulation and content (e.g., D’argembeau, Comblain, & Van Der Linden, 2003; Libby & Eibach, 2002; Robinson & Swa…”

“Neuroimaging studies of such effects yield complementary results: Cognitive working memory load is associated with decreased activity in emotion-processing regions, such as the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (e.g., Kellermann et al., 2012; see also Van Dillen et al., 2009; Kron, Schul, Cohen, & Hassin, 2010).”

“Indeed, research shows that reappraisal (i.e. thinking differently about an emotional situation; Gross, 1998a), distancing (i.e. imagining oneself as not involved in an emotional situation; Kross & Ayduk, 2011), and distraction (i.e. shifting attention away from emotionally evocative information; Van Dillen & Koole, 2…”

“In contrast, distraction involves redirecting attentional focus away from emotional stimuli toward something unrelated (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“This is consistent with earlier findings suggesting that attentional control, whether as a trait variable or induced in a given situation, plays a critical role in emotion regulation strategies (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“…be made, and that affective reactions themselves are shaped by cognition (Lazarus 1991; Schachter & Singer, 1962), a view that is supported by accumulating evidence that cognitive loads reduce affective responses (Bishop, 2009; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007; Van Dillen, van der Wal & van den Bos, 2012).”

“Indeed, such an assumption is supported by recent findings showing that additional cognitive processing during the perception of emotional events can reduce Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 6 August 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 1296 negative emotions (e.g., Van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Strick et al., 2009).”

“In this regard, experimental evidence has suggested that the induction of working memory load is able to decrease emotional processing (e.g., Van Dillen & Koole, 2007), and successful performance in the IAT requires a considerable amount of working memory resources (i.e., executive control…”

“For instance, although their implementation is likely to depend on prior positive affect experiences as mentioned previously, the use of distraction and positive reappraisal is primarily thought to arise in a context where a negative affect is felt (Folkman, 1997; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“…(e.g. mood, anxiety) is induced by presenting very unpleasant images, music, movies, or a mild electric shock prior to the performance of a task (Shackman et al., 2006, 2011; van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Joormann and Gotlib, 2008; Robinson et al., 2013; Vytal et al., 2013; Morgan and D’Mello, 2016).”

“In the irrelevant with EM condition, participants recalled the image of the irrelevant memory while performing the EM task.”

“Distraction is considered particularly adaptive for people at risk for depression because in the face of a potentially triggering negative event, it uses the limited processing capacity in the working memory and thus enables disengagement from mood‐congruent materials (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”

“This can occur across a wide variety of activities: completing complex over simple math problems (van Dillen & Koole, 2007), viewing complex over simple cartoons (Strick et al., 2009), and completing a complex over simple computer game (Bowman & Tamborini, 2012).”

“ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE published: 18 March 2013 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00112 Working memory load attenuates emotional enhancement in recognition memory”

“Theories of emotion regulation propose that WM plays an important role in the regulation of emotions (Van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Hofmann et al., 2011, 2012).”

“…memory by secondary tasks (Erber & Tesser, 1992; Kron, Schul, Cohen, & Hassin, 2010; Trask & Sigmon, 1999; Van Dillen, Heslenfeld, & Koole, 2009; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007, 2009), distress tolerance training (Bornovalova, Gratz, Daughters, Hunt, & Lejuez, 2012), acute exercise (Bernstein &…”

“This finding lends support to previous studies (Erber and Tesser, 1992; Van Dillen and Koole, 2007; Van Dillen et al., 2009) showing that loading working memory prevents mood-congruent processing and promotes distractions from the current mood.”

“For example, Van Dillen and Koole (2007) found self-reported mood was less negative when WM load was high compared to when it was low.”

“…condition might have raised arousal to an optimum attention control level, or it may have provided the motivation to increase attentional effort towards the task as a coping strategy to prevent distraction from threat processing and to reduce anxiety (Baumeister, 1991, Van Dillen and Koole, 2007).”

“This interactive relationship between WM load and emotional intensity of negative stimuli were examined by Van Dillen and Koole (2007).”

“…decreases negative emotions and downregulates activity in emotional brain regions after viewing emotional stimuli, and was therefore used to minimize opportunity for rumination (Gerin, Davidson, Christenfeld, Goyal, & Schwartz, 2006; Van Dillen, Heslenfeld, & Koole, 2009; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007).”