ABSTRACTAdopting a temporally distant perspective on stressors reduces distress in adults. Here we investigate whether the extent to which individuals project themselves into the future influences distancing efficacy. We also examined modulating effects of age across adolescence and reactive aggression: factors associated with reduced future-thinking and poor emotion regulation. Participants read scenarios and rated negative affect when adopting a distant-future perspective, near-future perspective, or when reacting naturally. Self-report data revealed significant downregulation of negative affect during the distant-future condition, with a (...) similar though non-significant skin conductance pattern. Importantly, participants who projected further ahead showed the greatest distress reductions. While temporal distancing efficacy did not vary with age, participants reporting greater reactive aggression showed reduced distancing efficacy, and projected themselves less far into the future. Fi... (shrink)

The ability to notice and reflect on distressing internal experiences from an objective perspective, often called psychological decentering, has been posited to be protective against mental health difficulties. However, little is known about how this skill relates to age across adolescence, its relationship with mental health, and how it may impact key domains such as affective executive control and social cognition. This study analysed a pre-existing dataset including mental health measures and cognitive tasks, administered to adolescents in Greater London and (...) Cambridge (mean age (SD) = 14.4 (1.77) years, N = 553). A self-report index of decentering based on available questionnaire items in the dataset was developed. Multiple linear regression was used to examine associations between decentering and mental health, affective executive control (measured using an affective Stroop Task, affective Working Memory Task, and affective Sustained Attention to Response Task) and social cognition. Higher decentering was significantly associated with lower depression and anxiety scores and higher psychological wellbeing. Results did not indicate significant relationships between decentering, affective executive control and social cognition. Further research is needed to discover cognitive mechanisms associated with this process, which could allow for optimisation of existing psychological therapy and reveal new avenues of intervention. (shrink)

Evidence is currently mixed regarding the way in which cognitive conflict modulates the effect of emotion on task performance. The present study aimed to address methodological differences across previous studies and investigate the conditions under which interference from emotional stimuli can either be elicited or eliminated under high cognitive conflict. Four behavioural experiments were conducted with a university sample using a gender-discrimination stimulus-response compatibility task. In line with our previous findings, Experiment 1 found that when emotion and cognitive conflict conditions (...) were blocked, emotional faces increased reaction time interference during response compatible trials (low conflict) but not response incompatible trials (high conflict). However, when conflict and emotion conditions were randomised in different configurations across Experiments 2 (all trials randomised), 3 (emotion blocked, compatibility randomised) and 4 (compatibility blocked, emotion randomised), emotion interfered with task performance across both high and low conflict trials. These results suggest that predictability of both compatibility and emotion is required in order to obtain reduced emotional interference under high cognitive conflict. Consistent with prior reports, a top–down anticipatory control mechanism seems to be engaged in the presence of negative emotion when there are incompatible stimulus-response mappings. (shrink)