title: Manipulations of attention enhance self-regulation.
abstract: Successful goal-directed behavior requires self-regulation to override competing impulses. Emerging evidence suggests that attention may mediate such acts, but little is known about the specific operations through which attention might influence self-regulation. Here we test this often-implicit assumption by manipulating attention mechanisms in two ways: one controlling the inhibition of inappropriate responses; the other controlling the breadth of attention. Participants significantly improved their performance on a self-regulation task after practice on a response inhibition task (Experiment 1) and after the induction of a broad focus of attention in a visual discrimination task (Experiment 2). We propose that such manipulations enhance self-regulation by engaging mechanisms that enhance the salience of goal-related representations and reduce the activation of competing goal-irrelevant neural representations. By more efficiently resolving conflict among the signals vying to drive behavior, pre-engaging attention may also help to conserve resources needed for continued self-regulation.
authors: University of Guelph, Canada.
authors: Asma
authors: A
authors: Hanif
authors: Anne E
authors: AE
authors: Ferrey
authors: Alexandra
authors: A
authors: Frischen
authors: Kathryn
authors: K
authors: Pozzobon
authors: John D
authors: JD
authors: Eastwood
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Smilek
authors: Mark J
authors: MJ
authors: Fenske
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012927:Social Control, Informal