Abstract
In social contexts, the dynamic nature of others’ emotions places unique demands on attention and emotion regulation. Mindfulness, characterized by heightened and receptive moment-to-moment attending, may be well-suited to meet these demands. In particular, mindfulness may support more effective cognitive control in social situations via efficient deployment of top-down attention. To test this, a randomized controlled study examined effects of mindfulness training (MT) on behavioral and neural (event-related potentials [ERPs]) responses during an emotional go/no-go task that tested cognitive control in the context of emotional facial expressions that tend to elicit approach or avoidance behavior. Participants (N = 66) were randomly assigned to four brief (20 min) MT sessions or to structurally equivalent book learning control sessions. Relative to the control group, MT led to improved discrimination of facial expressions, as indexed by d-prime, as well as more efficient cognitive control, as indexed by response time and accuracy, and particularly for those evidencing poorer discrimination and cognitive control at baseline. MT also produced better conflict monitoring of behavioral goal-prepotent response tendencies, as indexed by larger No-Go N200 ERP amplitudes, and particularly so for those with smaller No-Go amplitude at baseline. Overall, findings are consistent with MT’s potential to enhance deployment of early top-down attention to better meet the unique cognitive and emotional demands of socioemotional contexts, particularly for those with greater opportunity for change. Findings also suggest that early top-down attention deployment could be a cognitive mechanism correspondent to the present-oriented attention commonly used to explain regulatory benefits of mindfulness more broadly.
Highlights
The ability to actively maintain mental representations of personal or social goals and the means to achieve them is a hallmark of mature behavior regulation (e.g., [1,2]) and key to success in a variety of life domains (e.g., [3,4])
The present study examined whether brief training in a focused attention form of mindfulness would result in enhanced cognitive control of behavioral responses to facial expressions of emotion, as indexed by changes in behavioral and neural markers collected during performance of an emotional go/no-go task
Two one-way ANOVAs revealed that mindfulness training (MT) participants scored significantly higher than book listening control (BLC) postrandomization on both the credibility subscale [F(1, 51) = 13.42, p < .001] and the expectancy subscale [F(1, 51) = 8.91, p = .004]
Summary
The ability to actively maintain mental representations of personal or social goals and the means to achieve them is a hallmark of mature behavior regulation (e.g., [1,2]) and key to success in a variety of life domains (e.g., [3,4]). In day-to-day life this cognitive control is supported by a collection of interacting control processes such as the maintenance of behavioral goals, selection of relevant information, and conflict monitoring and resolution [5] Each of these control processes frequently interact with emotion [6,7], which can help or hinder successful cognitive control. Social situations involve unique challenges for regulating goal-driven behavior in the face of one’s own and others’ changing emotions These dynamic situations often require the maintenance of cognitive control in the context of potentially interfering emotional information [10], such as others’ facial expressions; in the pursuit of social goals, such as a successful business negotiation or the peaceful resolution of a disagreement, others’ expressions of emotion may conflict with prepotent (habitual) tendencies to approach or withdraw from emotional cues in the situation. Most everyone has experienced such challenges and, at least on occasion, their cognitive control capacities have failed them, leading many to wish these capacities were stronger
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