Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.06.003

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Volume 16, Issue 7, July 2012, Pages 365-372

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.06.003 Get rights and content

The affective biasing of attention is not typically considered to be a form of emotion regulation. In this article, we argue that ‘affect-biased attention’ – the predisposition to attend to certain categories of affectively salient stimuli over others – provides an important component of emotion regulation. Affect-biased attention regulates subsequent emotional responses by tuning one's filters for initial attention and subsequent processing. By reviewing parallel research in the fields of emotion regulation and affect-biased attention, as well as clinical and developmental research on individual differences in attentional biases, we provide convergent evidence that habitual affective filtering processes, tuned and re-tuned over development and situation, modulate emotional responses to the world. Moreover, they do so in a manner that is proactive rather than reactive.

Section snippets

Affect-biased attention is a form of emotion regulation

Emotion regulation, defined as ‘all of the conscious and non-conscious strategies we use to increase, maintain, or decrease one or more components of an emotional response’ [1], encompasses a wide array of strategies, ranging from implicit to explicit and reactive to effortful (see Glossary), that can be applied in anticipation of or in response to an emotional stressor 2, 3. Yet, despite the range of processes studied under the rubric of emotion regulation, including a number of attentional

Biased attention to affectively salient events

Like emotion regulation, attentional selection is a broad category that includes a number of component processes. For example, attention can be deployed before or after an event and can involve rapid or more extended processes, ranging from antecedent biasing of attention via control settings, to subsequent engagement of attention by stimulus salience, to later ease or difficulty of disengagement when an attentional shift is demanded [20]. Here, we discuss affect-biased attention as a specific

Affective tuning can shift with age and context

The affective salience model emphasizes that amygdala tuning, as a tractable index of motivational salience, is sensitive to both moment-to-moment and developmental context. Earlier notions of the amygdala's role in affective processing emphasized the idea that enhanced attention to threat, marked by enhanced amygdala activation, was ‘hard-wired’ in the service of evolutionary goals (e.g., [41]). A more recent conception is that, rather than being a hard-wired ‘automatic threat detector’, the

Individual differences in affect-biased attention

We suggest that well-documented individual differences in affect-biased attention to positive or negative stimuli reflect individual differences in habitual employment of affectively motivated control settings, which play a regulatory role by influencing subsequent regulatory processes. A recent study [52] found that participants who were high in a form of neuroticism linked to volatility, which involves predisposition towards anger or irritation, as well as affect-biased attention for negative

Attentional biases influence emotional responding and are trainable

It is well established that some people are predisposed to focus on threatening aspects of a scene, whereas others focus on the positive aspects 53, 54. For example, imagine looking out at a sea of faces before giving a lecture. Some people habitually zoom in on frowning or bored faces. Others are predisposed to find smiles of approval. A robust body of research has linked attentional biases toward threatening versus neutral or positive images with normative and clinical anxiety [53], and

Attentional biases emerge early, influence behavioral outcomes, and are trainable in children

Attentional biases, which are associated with common genetic variations [61], can be measured as early in development as five years [62]. They are also associated with behavioral outcomes early in development. For example, a recent study demonstrated that attentional biases to threat predicted whether temperamentally inhibited children would demonstrate social withdrawal behaviors at age five [63]. Moreover, recent research has extended ABM training to anxiety reduction in children, as well. In

Direct measures of affect-biased attention

It is important to note that exogenous spatial cueing tasks, such as the dot probe, do not directly measure/manipulate antecedent tuning of perceptual filters to specific categories of stimuli. Thus, they are not direct measures of affect-biased attention as a form of habitual control setting that precedes stimulus presentation. Rather, they measure rapid capture and/or sustained retention of exogenous spatial attention following presentation of salient stimuli [55]. Thus, they measure the

Future directions

Despite the fact that there are suggestive data supporting our proposal that affect-biased attention is a form of emotion regulation, further research is required to test directly the influence of affect-biased attention on behavioral and physiological measures associated with emotional response to emotional challenges, as well as on measures of specific downstream regulatory processes (Box 2). Future research can also draw on animal models and human neurogenetics to elucidate the role of

Concluding remarks

If affect-biased attention is a form of emotion regulation, as we have argued here, one might wonder whether any form of emotion is unregulated – and hence whether the term ‘emotion regulation’ is ultimately meaningful. In the end, when one delineates the full range of subcomponents that modulate cognition/emotion interactions over multiple timescales, one may conclude that there is at no stage a ‘pure’ emotional response that is not always already regulated in some way. Not only may it be

Glossary

Affect-biased attention: attentional biases that give rise to preferential perception of a particular category of stimulus based on its relative affective salience.
Affective control setting: a habitual ‘mental set,’ based on our history of experience with what is motivationally relevant in a given context, which biases attention prior to an event.
Affective salience: the tendency of an item to stand out relative to its neighbors due to an association between its semantic meaning and emotional arousal.

References (72)

I.B. Mauss
Automatic emotion regulation during anger provocation
J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.
(2007)
S.C. Soares
Some animal specific fears are more specific than others: Evidence from attention and emotion measures
Behav. Res. Ther.
(2009)
P. Vuilleumier
How brains beware: neural mechanisms of emotional attention
Trends Cogn. Sci.
(2005)
L. Pessoa
Attentional control of the processing of neural and emotional stimuli
Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res.
(2002)
A. Ohman
On the unconscious subcortical origin of human fear
Physiol. Behav.
(2007)
M.D. Lewis et al.
The self-regulating brain: cortical-subcortical feedback and the development of intelligent action
Cogn. Dev.
(2007)
I. Volman
Anterior prefrontal cortex inhibition impairs control over social emotional actions
Curr. Biol.
(2011)
R.M. Todd
Witholding response in the face of a smile: age-related differences in prefrontal sensitivity to Nogo cues following happy and angry faces
Dev. Cogn. Neurosci.
(2012)
W.A. Cunningham
Aspects of neuroticism and the amygdala: chronic tuning from motivational styles
Neuropsychologia
(2010)
Y. Hakamata
Attention bias modification treatment: a meta-analysis toward the establishment of novel treatment for anxiety
Biol. Psychiatry
(2010)

E. Fox

Preconscious processing biases predict emotional reactivity to stress

Biol. Psychiatry

(2010)

A. Lutz

Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation

Trends Cogn. Sci.

(2008)

P.D. Zelazo

The development of conscious control in childhood

Trends Cogn. Sci.

(2004)

W.A. Cunningham et al.

Attitudes and evaluations: a social cognitive neuroscience perspective

Trends Cogn. Sci.

(2007)

J.J. Gross

Emotion regulation in adulthood: timing is everything

Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci.

(2001)

J.J. Gross

Cognition and Emotion Lecture at the 2010 SPSP Emotion Preconference

Cogn. Emot.

(2011)

N. Eisenberg

Emotion-related self-regulation and its relation to children's maladjustment

Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol.

(2010)

M. Corbetta et al.

Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

(2002)

J.J. Gross et al.

Emotion regulation: conceptual foundations

L.E. Williams

The unconscious regulation of emotion: nonconscious reappraisal goals modulate emotional reactivity

Emotion

(2009)

A. Gyurak

Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: a dual-process framework

Cogn. Emot.

(2011)

N.A. Fox et al.

The development of self-control of emotion: intrinsic and extrinsic influences

Motiv. Emot.

(2003)

M.K. Rothbart et al.

Development of individual differences in temperament

Silvers, J.A., et al. Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation, and rejection sensitivity in...

H.A. Wadlinger et al.

Fixing our focus: training attention to regulate emotion

Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev.

(2011)

J.S. Bruner et al.

Value and need as organizing factors in perception. Journal

Abnorm. Psychol.

(1947)

M.D. Lewis

Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling

Behav. Brain Sci.

(2005)

L. Pessoa

On the relationship between emotion and cognition

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

(2008)

K.R. Scherer

Emotions are emergent processes: they require a dynamic computational architecture

Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B: Biol. Sci.

(2009)

A. Kappas

Emotion is not just an alarm bell – it's the whole tootin’ fire truck

Cogn. Emot.

(2011)

B. Mesquita et al.

An emotion perspective on emotion regulation

Cogn. Emot.

(2011)

D. Cosmelli

Attending to the stream of consciousness: A methodological challenge

L. Itti

A model of saliency-based visual attention for rapid scene analysis

IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell.

(1998)

X. Hou et al.

Saliency detection: a spectral residual approach

Proc. IEEE CVPR

(2007)

R. Desimone et al.

Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention

Annu. Rev. Neurosci.

(1995)

C.L. Folk

Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings

J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.

(1992)

Cited by (263)

Lower maternal emotional availability is related to increased attention toward fearful faces during infancy
2024, Infant Behavior and Development
It has been suggested that infants’ age-typical attention biases for faces and facial expressions have an inherent connection with the parent–infant interaction. However, only a few previous studies have addressed this topic. To investigate the association between maternal caregiving behaviors and an infant’s attention for emotional faces, 149 mother–infant dyads were assessed when the infants were 8 months. Caregiving behaviors were observed during free-play interactions and coded using the Emotional Availability Scales. The composite score of four parental dimensions, that are sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness, and non-hostility, was used in the analyses. Attention disengagement from faces was measured using eye tracking and face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy, and fearful faces and scrambled-face control pictures as stimuli. The main finding was that lower maternal emotional availability was related to an infant’s higher attention to fearful faces (p = .042), when infant sex and maternal age, education, and concurrent depressive and anxiety symptoms were controlled. This finding indicates that low maternal emotional availability may sensitize infants’ emotion processing system for the signals of fear at least during this specific age around 8 months. The significance of the increased attention toward fearful faces during infancy is an important topic for future research.
Maternal anxiety during pregnancy predicts infant attention to affective faces
2024, Journal of Affective Disorders
Prenatal maternal anxiety is a known influence on offspring development. General anxiety and pregnancy-related anxiety (a distinct type of anxiety encompassing fears associated with pregnancy) are associated with offspring socioemotional development, with potential consequences for later emotional and behavioral problems. This study examines whether maternal pregnancy-related and general anxiety relate to infant attention to affective faces, a process which plays an integral role in early socioemotional development.
Participants included 86 mothers and their 6-month-old infants (56.3 % female). Mothers completed measures of pregnancy-related and general anxiety three times through gestation. Infants' attention to affective faces was assessed with an eye-tracking task during which a series of face pairs were presented (happy, angry, or sad face paired with a neutral face). Overall attention measures included attention-holding (total looking time) and attention-orienting (latency to faces); affect-biased attention measures included proportion of total looking time to emotional faces and latency difference score.
Higher maternal pregnancy-related anxiety across gestation predicted decreased infant attention-holding to affective faces [F(1,80) = 7.232, p = .009, partial η2 = 0.083]. No differences were found in infant attention-orienting or affect-biased attention.
Reliance on a correlational study design precludes the ability to make causal inferences.
Maternal pregnancy-related anxiety is an important predictor of child outcomes. We provide novel evidence that pregnancy-related anxiety predicts infant attention to emotional faces, behaviors which have important implications for socioemotional development. Providers may consider pregnancy-related anxiety as a target for screening and treatment that may benefit both pregnant individual and offspring.
(A lack of) effects of acute social stress on attentional bias to threat
2023, Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology
Attentional biases toward or away from emotionally evocative stimuli have been well documented and are known to be clinically relevant, making it important to understand how various factors contribute to them. Some work has suggested that acute stress modulates attentional biases, but this work has produced inconsistent results. For example, many studies have found that stress enhances attentional bias, others that stress decreases attentional bias, and others still that there is no effect of stress at all. Methodological differences may explain these inconsistencies. For example, discrepancies exist between studies in participant sex (e.g., mixed sample vs. all men) and in the type of attentional bias paradigm. We addressed these gaps by examining the effects of an acute social stressor (vs. control) on attentional bias assessed via facial dot probe, focusing on potential sex differences in these effects (N = 141). We found that, overall, participants were significantly biased towards threat, but biases did not differ by stress condition or sex. These findings help to clarify the existing discrepancy in the literature, as we found that stress exerts little if any effect on attentional bias assessed via a facial dot probe.
Cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation: Dual layers of resilience against the emergence of paranoia
2023, Behaviour Research and Therapy
Cognitive inflexibility has been linked to difficulties in revising paranoid beliefs, whereas cognitive flexibility may protect against the development and maintenance of paranoid beliefs by allowing for troubleshooting in light of available evidence. While less discussed in the context of paranoia research, better regulation of affective states may reduce the likelihood of biased beliefs developing in the first place, reducing the burden on belief updating mechanisms. The present study hypothesized that high cognitive flexibility and strong emotion regulation ability may act as a reciprocal protective shield against the risk associated with lower ability in the other domain. Participants were recruited from the general population (N = 221) to complete the Ambiguous Interpretation Inflexibility Task, as well as self-report measures for paranoia and emotion regulation ability. The results show an interaction between cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation ability as related to less severe paranoia. Better emotion regulation ability is associated with lower paranoia in individuals with lower cognitive flexibility, whereas higher cognitive flexibility is associated with less severe paranoia in individuals with greater emotion regulation difficulties. These findings highlight the importance of emotion regulation in early interventions of paranoia, especially how emotion regulation relates to known cognitive vulnerabilities such as inflexibility.
Chronic stress in peer relationships moderates the association between pubertal development and neural response to emotional faces in adolescence
2023, Biological Psychology
Adolescence is a period of heightened risk for multiple forms of psychopathology, partly due to greater exposure to interpersonal stress. One way that interpersonal stress may increase risk for psychopathology is by altering the normative development of neural systems that support socio-affective processing. The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential component that reflects sustained attention to motivationally-salient information and is a promising marker of risk for stress-related psychopathology. However, it is not clear how the LPP to socio-affective information changes across adolescence, nor whether exposure to stress with peers interferes with normative developmental differences in the LPP to socio-affective content during this period. In 92 adolescent girls (10–19 years old), we assessed the LPP to task-irrelevant emotional and neutral faces, as well as behavioural measures of interference following the presentation of these faces. Adolescents at more advanced stages of puberty showed a smaller LPP to emotional faces, but adolescents exposed to greater peer stress exhibited a larger LPP to these stimuli. Additionally, for girls exposed to lower levels of peer stress, more advanced pubertal development was associated with a smaller LPP to emotional faces, whereas for girls exposed to higher levels of peer stress, the association between pubertal development and the LPP to emotional faces was not significant. Neither stress nor pubertal stage was significantly associated with behavioural measures. Combined, these data suggest that one pathway through which stress exposure increases risk for psychopathology during adolescence is by interfering with the normative development of socio-affective processing.
Higher attention bias for fear at 8 months of age is associated with better socioemotional competencies during toddlerhood
2023, Infant Behavior and Development
In previous studies, an attention bias for signals of fear and threat has been related to socioemotional problems, such as anxiety symptoms, and socioemotional competencies, such as altruistic behaviors in children, adolescents and adults. However, previous studies lack evidence about these relations among infants and toddlers.
Our aim was to study the association between the individual variance in attention bias for faces and, specifically, fearful faces during infancy and socioemotional problems and competencies during toddlerhood.
The study sample was comprised of 245 children (112 girls). We explored attentional face and fear biases at the age of 8 months using eye tracking and the face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy and fearful faces and a scrambled-face control stimulus. Socioemotional problems and competencies were reported by parents with the Brief Infant and Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) when children were 24 months old.
A higher attentional fear bias at 8 months of age was related to higher levels of socioemotional competence at 24 months of age (β = .18, p = .008), when infants’ sex and temperamental affectivity, maternal age, education and depressive symptoms were controlled. We found no significant association between attentional face or fear bias and socioemotional problems.
We found that the heightened attention bias for fearful faces was related to positive outcomes in early socioemotional development. Longitudinal study designs are needed to explore the changes in the relation between the attention bias for fear or threat and socioemotional development during early childhood.

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

OpinionAffect-biased attention as emotion regulation

Section snippets

Affect-biased attention is a form of emotion regulation

Biased attention to affectively salient events

Affective tuning can shift with age and context

Individual differences in affect-biased attention

Attentional biases influence emotional responding and are trainable

Attentional biases emerge early, influence behavioral outcomes, and are trainable in children

Direct measures of affect-biased attention

Future directions

Concluding remarks

Glossary

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

Behav. Res. Ther.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res.

Physiol. Behav.

Cogn. Dev.

Curr. Biol.

Dev. Cogn. Neurosci.

Neuropsychologia

Biol. Psychiatry

Biol. Psychiatry

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Emotion regulation in adulthood: timing is everything

Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci.

Cognition and Emotion Lecture at the 2010 SPSP Emotion Preconference

Cogn. Emot.

Emotion-related self-regulation and its relation to children's maladjustment

Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol.

Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

Emotion regulation: conceptual foundations

The unconscious regulation of emotion: nonconscious reappraisal goals modulate emotional reactivity

Emotion

Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: a dual-process framework

Cogn. Emot.

The development of self-control of emotion: intrinsic and extrinsic influences

Motiv. Emot.

Development of individual differences in temperament

Fixing our focus: training attention to regulate emotion

Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev.

Value and need as organizing factors in perception. Journal

Abnorm. Psychol.

Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling

Behav. Brain Sci.

On the relationship between emotion and cognition

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.

Emotions are emergent processes: they require a dynamic computational architecture

Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B: Biol. Sci.

Emotion is not just an alarm bell – it's the whole tootin’ fire truck

Cogn. Emot.

An emotion perspective on emotion regulation

Cogn. Emot.

Attending to the stream of consciousness: A methodological challenge

A model of saliency-based visual attention for rapid scene analysis

IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell.

Saliency detection: a spectral residual approach

Proc. IEEE CVPR

Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention

Annu. Rev. Neurosci.

Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings

J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform.

Opinion
Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation