Attentional deployment plays a critical role in the early development of emotion regulation since the ability to direct attention resources towards or away from a stimulus can increase or reduce the affective valence with which it is associated, in turn changing the experience and potential salience (Rothbart, Posner, &
Rosicky, 1994). Children are continually exposed to arousing stimuli and their ability to flexibly direct their attention towards or away from stimuli is one of the earliest regulatory processes to appear (Rothbart, Ziaie, & O'boyle, 1992).
The ability to flexibly deploy attention away or towards emotion-inducing stimuli has been studied throughout childhood. In infancy, a supportive caregiver assists the child with the engagement or disengagement of attention, thereby providing co-regulation of arousal to external stimuli. M. H. Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis, and Morton (1991) found that four-month-old infants, who were able to easily disengage their attention from attractive stimuli, were rated by their mothers as more easily soothed and less fearful than those infants that were not. Effective disengagement strategies are found to decrease negative emotions, assist children in managing early frustration and fear (Calkins, Smith, Gill, & Johnson, 1998; Diaz & Bell, 2011; Stifter & Braungart, 1995) and also to decrease anxious behaviour over time (Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2004; Stifter & Spinrad, 2002). In the school context, children are frequently confronted with tasks or events that they can neither choose nor change. In such situations, emotions can be regulated by selectively orienting attention towards a particular aspect of the situation, or away from the situation towards an alternative stimulus. One of the most common forms of attentional deployment strategies examined in school age children is distraction, in which children switch their attention away from the source of emotional arousal and re-direct attention towards an alternative aspect of a situation, or away from the situation altogether (Gross, 2014). Distraction may also involve changing the internal focus of thought, such as calling to mind memories that support the desired emotion (Thiruchselvam, Hajcak, & Gross, 2012).
According to Gross’ (1998b) model, distraction is an antecedent-focused regulation strategy that appears early on in the process, preventing an emotional experience from developing (Gross & Thompson, 2007). In ER research, distraction is viewed as a positive, adaptive strategy since it is generally part of active problem solving (Braet et al., 2014). In some situations at school, distraction may also be seen as a positive. For example, a child struggling to complete a challenging reading task may turn away from chatty classmates in
order to avoid the negative affective consequence of a reprimand from their teacher.
According to Op’t Eynde, De Corte, and Verschaffel (2007), children have a tendency to select distraction strategies for down-regulating frustration. More recently, N. B. Perry, Swingler, Calkins, and Bell (2016) found that infants who demonstrated greater attention to task stimuli at 10 months old, were less frustrated during a challenging puzzle task at 3 years of age. Higher observed frustration was indicative of less regulatory ability.
Thus, an apparent contradiction emerges suggesting that children’s ability to both focus attention and disengage attention are positively related to emotion regulation ability. It may help to consider a focus on context to help resolve this inconsistency. In some situations it is more appropriate for a child to ignore distractions and focus their attention, such as in the example provided above of the child turning away from distracting classmates. Whereas in other tasks that involve a negative emotion (e.g. receiving a disappointing gift), disengagement may be more helpful.
Distraction has also been studied as a response-focused emotion regulation strategy (Denson, Moulds, & Grisham, 2012; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). In this case, the emotional response is already underway when the individual attempts to distract themselves from the negative emotions they are experiencing. To illustrate, a child that has just had an argument with a friend can distract herself from the emotional encounter by talking to another friend about their plans for after school activities. In this way the negative emotions associated with the argument should diminish. Although such a strategy may seem helpful, response- focused emotion regulation is generally viewed as maladaptive. This is seen in the context of psychological recovery from childhood trauma. In their meta- analysis of risk-factors, Trickey and colleagues (2012) found that distraction is strongly associated with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In situations of extreme anxiety, disengaging from the emotions associated with distressing events may represent a powerful ability to down-regulate unhelpful emotions but in such circumstances, can lead to a worsening of symptoms. It is likely that a chronic reliance on response-focused distraction strategies may
obstruct the process of habituation to a stimulus in order to relearn its neutral or less threatening significance.
Like most emotion regulation strategies, distraction can be called upon to either help or harm educational outcomes (Jacobs & Gross, 2014) and thus according to the context, can be seen as either adaptive or maladaptive. As has been discussed, distraction is found to be helpful as a strategy to manage frustration (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2007) and in situations of classroom disruption, directing attention to relevant distractions is also helpful for task focus and completion (Kurki, Jarvela, Mykkanen, & Maatta, 2015). However, problems associated with distraction are also found in relation to classroom learning situations. Habitual use of distraction strategies may cause problems with peer relationships due to their tendency to make conversation partners feel less socially connected (Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007). Distraction is also well-studied feature of research related to disorders of attention and hyperactivity that result in learning difficulties. Such maladaptive concerns in relation to ER strategies will be discussed in more detail later in the present chapter.
On-going research attention is required to unravel the complexities and contradictions discussed here in relation to attentional deployment strategies. Recent research has begun to consider how early development of attention processes affect emotion regulation competencies in later childhood (Rueda, Posner, & Rothbart, 2005). Given distraction’s leading role in the ontogeny of emotion regulation strategies, this work is important for understanding how emotion regulation develops throughout childhood and adulthood. Future studies may reveal that the early development of attentional deployment strategies underlie the downstream development of more complex emotion regulation abilities perhaps in part, by providing opportunities to practice regulating emotional arousal.