Behavioral and neuropsychological correlates of emotion regulation via attentional deployment: An expanded replication

Attentional deployment (AD) constitutes an emotion regulation (ER) strategy that shifts the attentional focus to modulate the emotional experience. There are very few experimental paradigms that can study AD. One such task studies AD by using emotional images with zones of focus within them, to manipulate visual attention toward arousing or non-arousing portions of the scene. However, this task has only been implemented with participants inside a scanner and has no replications beyond the work of the original research group. In the present study, we replicated and extended a previously introduced AD task, implementing it with a sample of 55 adult participants. Our sample performed the task in a regular laboratory setting, including eye-tracking to monitor instruction following, and in addition, participants completed an attentional test. We replicated the original AD effect in a new population sample, although we found a lower effect size. We conceived and computed an estimate of AD abilities by comparing intensity and valence ratings across attentional conditions. We also analyzed the association between attention measured through the Attention Network Test (ANT) and AD capacities and found no relationship. The task can be used in the laboratory to analyze the AD process. Our replication and expansion of the AD task provide valuable insights into the behavioral and neuropsychological correlates of ER strategies.