Attentional deployment is a type of emotional regulation strategy in which a person attempts to alter their emotional state by shifting their attention in a particular way as the situation arises. 

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- Decreases overall psychological distress
- Can help improve emotional regulation through attentional deployment

Benefits of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

Emotion regulation skills are developed through the promotion of metacognitive awareness as the individual disengages from cognitive actions, decreases rumination, and working memory capacity increases that allow for enhanced attentional deployment.

How Emotion Regulation is Developed Through Mindfulness Meditation

A blanket term used to describe the various sub-process that underlie an individual's ability to direct internal awareness of various external stimuli. Examples include "alerting" (becoming aware of stimuli entering one's conscious attention), "conflict monitoring" (mitigating disctraction), and "sustained attention" (the ability to maintain singular focus for an extended period of time).

Attention in Mindfulness

Being able to regulate one’s emotions has been shown to be very important in the treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). There is evidence that practicing mindfulness by utilizing Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and continuing it long-term can benefit attentional deployment. Those with SAD have a dysregulation of attention processes, shown by extreme focus and attentional avoidance of stimuli they perceive as a threat. Therefore, the positive effects MBSR has on attentional processes may target the mechanisms that contribute to SAD.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for patients with Social Anxiety Disorder 

Jazaieri, H., Morrison, A. S., Goldin, P. R., & Gross, J. J. (2015). The role of emotion and emotion regulation in social anxiety disorder. Current psychiatry reports, 17(1), 531.

The Role of Emotion and Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety
Disorder

Attentional Deployment

Mindfulness-based stress reduction decreases individuals' overall psychological distress.

Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on Psychological Distress

Working memory capacity is a psychological characteristic that refers to an individual's ability to simultaneously hold and process multiple pieces of information in their mind. In cognitive psychology, this capacity can be quantified using systematic measurement procedures.

Working Memory Capacity

Rumination happens when a person spends a significant amount of time thinking and worrying about a problem. The thought that is ruminated feeds itself continuously, so the person becomes stuck in a constant cycle of worry that eventually distorts their perception of the reality of the situation.

Rumination

Metacognitive awareness is the acknowledgement that one's thoughts are only thoughts, and they may not be facts. When used as a definition of mindfulness, it is called mindful metacognition, and conceptualizes mindfulness as an information processing style.

Mindful Metacognition/Metacognitive Awareness

When two stimuli are presented in quick succession, most people fail to identify the second stimuli, known as Attentional Blink. Thought to be the result of limited attentional resources, mindfulness research shows that seasoned meditators were able to correctly identify the second stimulus. EEG recordings confirm lower brain activity in response to the first stimulus, suggesting meditators reserve more attentional resources across various stimuli for a more fully engaged deployment of conscious attention.

Attentional Blink in Mindfulness

- increase in perceptual sensitivity and improved vigilance in a sustained visual attention task
- increased activation in the attention network (prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate among other regions)
- less impulsiveness, tolerance to stressors, and heightened self-esteem
- increased response inhibition predicting adaptive socio-emotional functioning 
- reduced ruminative thinking and anxiety 
- increased empathy and self-compassion 
- reduced stress symptoms, helps in the process of positive reappraisal to deal with stress

Cognitive and Psychological Effects of Meditation Retreats

Mindfulness meditation improves conflict monitoring and reduces attentional blink. These changes were studies using the attention network test (ANT) and other experimental paradigms to determine the effects of meditation on attentional performance.

Effects of mindfulness meditation on attention

Through MBSR research, it was found that MBSR attacks social anxiety disorder on a behavioral level and a neural level.  Patients found that they had less negative emotions when focusing on breath work.  In the neural networks it was found that focusing on breathing allowed attention regulation from an explicit to implicit process.  This means that breath works allows a patient with social anxiety disorder to rewire their brain to be more focused when breathing, thus limiting the symptoms of social anxiety.

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