| Emotional regulation is the process by which individuals modulate their own or others' emotional responses.Emotion regulation ability can help individuals cope with emotional problems caused by various stressful events in life actively,maintain high levels of mental health and subjective happiness,and help avoid emotional disorders(e.g.,depression and anxiety disorder).Early research focused on controlled emotional regulation,which is characterized by the involvement of cognitive control and cognitive resource depletion.In order to achieve a more efficient emotion regulation effect,automatic emotion regulation has received increasing attention in recent years that does not tax or only taxes a small set of cognitive resources(i.e.,effortless).Based on the relevant theories of automatic emotion regulation,this dissertation defines automatic emotion regulation(AER)as a self-regulation process that can be initiated by emotional situations automatically,driven by implicit or explicit emotion regulation goals.Although previous studies have demonstrated that emotion regulation can operate in an automatic manner,it remains unclear about the cognitive-neural mechanism of automatic emotion regulation and whether it is effective for people with depression.Therefore,the main goal of this dissertation was to systematically explore these issues using behavioral approaches combined with electroencephalogram(EEG)and functional magnetic resonance imaging(functional magnetic resonance imaging,f MRI)techniques.This dissertation consists of seven chapters.In the first chapter,we introduced conceptual and theoretical foundations of automatic emotion regulation,research progress and limitations,and expectations for the future.The chapters from two to six correspond to five empirical studies.In brief,study 1 distinguished between explicit-automatic and implicit-automatic emotion regulation,and compared their regulatory effects and cognitive costs for the first time.Study 2 examined the time mechanism of automatic emotion regulation during the implementation phase and whether the regulatory effects of automatic emotion regulation have characteristics of continuity and robustness.Study 3 divided automatic emotion regulation into practice phase,implementation phase,and continuation phase based on theories of cognitive automation and the process model of emotion regulation,and explored the neural mechanism of automatic emotion regulation during the practice phase and the intrinsic connection between practice phase and later implementation phase.Study 4explored the underlying structure of cognitive representation of automatic emotion regulation by comparing the regulatory effects of automatic emotion regulation goals(like a steering wheel)and ifthen plan(like engines),and combination of goals and strategy.After basically exploring the cognitive-neural mechanism of automatic emotion regulation,study 5 examined the actual application effect of automatic emotion regulation in people with high depression tendencies.It should be noted that the current dissertation mainly focused on cognitive reappraisal to avoid the interference of the types of emotion regulation strategies on the effects of automatic emotion regulation,which has been widely documented to be effective in reducing adverse emotional responses.Specifically,Study 1(Chap.2)was a behavioral experiment,which used classic instruction,implementation intention,and goal priming paradigms to initiate controlled cognitive reappraisal,explicit-automatic,and implicit-automatic cognitive reappraisal.Study 1 aimed to examine which of these three forms of reappraisal can regulate emotion more efficiently by comparing three forms of reappraisal strategy with the baseline condition(i.e.,passive viewing)on regulatory effects and cognitive costs.The experiment is a mixed experiment design,in which the form of emotion regulation is a between-subject variable(three reappraisal groups and one control group,50 participants in each group,a total sample size of 200),and the picture type(aversion and neutrality)is a within-subject variable.Results showed that explicit-automatic cognitive reappraisal is the most effective in downregulating subjective ratings of negative emotional valence and arousal,followed by controlled cognitive reappraisal.The implicit-automatic cognitive reappraisal does not show any modulating effect on these subjective emotional ratings.In terms of cognitive cost,we did not find a significant difference between the three forms of cognitive reappraisal and the passive-viewing group.These findings indicate that explicit-automatic emotion regulation initiated by implementation intention has the highest efficiency of emotion regulation among the three forms of regulation,i.e.,it can achieve the most significant effect of emotion downregulation with the same cognitive cost.Study 2(Chap.3)is a behavioral experiment,which also used a mixed experimental design.Specifically,the between-subject variable is the type of emotion regulation strategy,including four levels(50 people in each group,a total sample size of 200): passive-viewing,goal intention(GI),pure implementation intention(if-then plan,IP),goal intention + implementation intention(goal intention& if-then plan,GIIP).The within-subject variable is picture types,including neutral and negative pictures.Results showed that the participants who formed pure implementation intention(IP)and complete GIIP both showed significantly lower negative emotional experiences compared with the passive viewing group.However,there was no significant difference between the subject group who only formed the pure goal intention(GI)and the passive viewing group.These findings indicate that single goal intention may not have the function to promote the implementation of automatic emotion regulation.Although the implementation intention itself also has a certain promotion effect,it can only play the greatest emotional down-regulation effect when combined with the goal intention.In short,the cognitive representation of automatic emotion regulation is likely to be an organic whole that includes different components,at least including goal intention and implementation intention.Study 3(Chap.4)is an EEG experiment that also used a mixed experiment design.The betweensubject variable is emotion regulation type(automatic cognitive reappraisal,controlled cognitive reappraisal,and passive-viewing group,25 people in each group,a total sample size of 75),the withinsubject variable is the type of picture(negative and neutral).The experimental process includes three stages: a practice stage(without recording EEG),an implementation stage(first negative emotion exposure),and a re-exposure stage.Results showed that in the first emotional exposure stage,the automatic reappraisal and the controlled reappraisal both effectively reduced the negative emotional experience under high-and low-emotion intensity compared with the control group.Physiologically,automatic reappraisal effectively reduces the amplitude of LPP over the entire period of interest(300-1700ms)compared to the passive viewing group.Although the controlled reappraisal showed an effect of emotional reduction in the period of 500-700 ms,the significance of the effect disappeared after multiple comparison corrections.Furthermore,during the re-exposure stage,participants in the automatic reappraisal group still reported significantly lower subjective emotional valence,arousal,and lower central-parietal LPP amplitude(300-1700 ms)than those in the passive viewing group.In contrast,there is no significant difference in the subjective and LPP measures between the pictures with histories of controlled reappraisal and the passive-viewing.Moreover,in the re-exposure stage,we also found that only the automatic reappraisal group,but not the controlled reappraisal group,showed a lower prefrontal LPP amplitude than the passive-viewing group,indicating that their cognitive costs were lower than the passive viewing group during the re-exposure stage.These findings first indicate that the automatic reappraisal has a different time mechanism of emotional modulation than that of controlled reappraisal,i.e.,its regulation effect is earlier and longer in time;and its cognitive costs show a downward trend along with time.Study 4(Chap.5)is a task-based f MRI experiment,which requires the passive-viewing group and the automatic cognitive reappraisal group(25 participants in each group,a sample size of 50)to form goal intentions and implementation intentions related to emotional experience(relatively negative)and cognitive reappraisal(relatively positive)during the practice phase,respectively.After the practice phase,the task asked the two groups of participants to perform the same emotionelicitation task using sad faces as emotional stimuli.Behavioral results showed that unpleasantness ratings of the automatic reappraisal group during the practice and implementation phases are significantly lower than those of the passive-viewing group,and higher unpleasantness ratings during the practice phase significantly predict higher unpleasantness ratings during the implementation phase.Brain imaging results showed that the passive-viewing group had a stronger functional connectivity between the superior parietal lobule(SPL)and bilateral amygdala or hippocampus compared to the reappraisal group.Supramarginal Gyrus(SMG)and fusiform gyrus are more functionally connected in the reappraisal group than in the passive-viewing group.Consistent with the behavioral results,brain imaging analysis also found that the enhancement of the functional connection strength between the right SPL and the right amygdala in the passive viewing group during the practice phase predicted a higher unpleasantness rating during the implementation phase.In contrast,the functional connection between the lateral rear SMG and the left rear FG in the automatic reappraisal group significantly predicted a lower subjective emotional experience during the implementation phase.Based on previous f MRI findings of emotion regulation,these findings may indicate that the functional connection of the SPL-amygdala is related to automatic negative emotion processing,and the SMGfusiform gyrus functional connection is related to the automatic reappraisal of facial emotion.Study 5(Chap.6)is a behavior experiment,using self-regulating strategies(passive viewing,intentional cognitive re-evaluation,automatic cognitive re-evaluation)*depression group(depressionprone group,health control group)* picture type(sad,neutral)3*2*2 mixed experiment design.Specifically,self-regulating strategy and group are between-subjects variables and the picture types are the within-subjects variable.The experimental procedure is the same as Study 3,including two phases of exposure and re-exposure.In the first phase of the experimental task,both the groups of automatic reappraisal the controlled reappraisal significantly reduced the participants' valence ratings of the sad faces compared to the passive viewing group.However,on the arousal index,the participants with high depression tendencies and the health-control participants showed different patterns of emotion regulation.The health-control subjects effectively reduced their negative emotional arousal,irrespective of using controlled cognitive reappraisal,or automatic cognitive reappraisal.However,the subjects with high depression tendency only reported a lower rating of negative emotional arousal than the passive viewing group when using automatic reappraisal,but not controlled reappraisal.Results of the second phase showed that the emotional down-regulation effects of controlled reappraisal on the emotional arousal or valence disappeared.Whether in participants with high depression or healthy-control participants,the automatic reappraisal group still reported lower emotional arousal and valence ratings compared with the passive-viewing group,once again verifying that the emotional down-regulation effect of automatic reappraisal has a characteristic of persistence.The findings of Study 5 indicate that automatic cognitive reappraisal shows a better emotional regulation effect in groups with high depression tendencies than controlled cognitive reappraisal.The highlights and limitations of this dissertation are summarized as follows and discussed in the Chap.7 in detail.(1)Explicit-automatic emotion regulation has higher emotional regulation efficiency for the self-emotional experience than implicit-automatic emotion regulation.(2)The practice phase of automatic emotion regulation is closely related to its implementation process at both behavioral and neural levels.The functional connectivity between the SPL and amygdala plays a key role in forming and implementing cognitive representations of automatic processing of negative emotion,whereas the functional connectivity between SMG and fusiform gyrus plays an important role in that of automatic reappraisal.(4)Automatic emotion regulation and controlled emotion regulation have different time mechanisms of emotional processing.Specifically,automatic emotion regulation not only modulates emotional physiological response(LPP)earlier,and its regulatory effects last longer than that of controlled reappraisal.(5)Cognitive representation of automatic emotion regulation is hierarchical and holistic,which includes at least two components of goal intention and implementation intention,and the combination of the two components can produce better emotion regulation effects.(6)Compared with controlled emotion regulation,automatic emotion regulation showed better downregulation effects in people with high depression tendencies.This dissertation systematically explored the cognitive-neural mechanisms underlying the practice phase,implementation phase,and duration phase of automatic emotion regulation from the perspective of the time processing process.According to our findings,we proposed working theories to explain neural networks and cognitive representation models of automatic emotion regulation.At the same time,the study shed light on the application of automatic emotion regulation in people with high depression tendency,which is valuable for promoting the application of automatic emotion regulation to the cognitive intervention of emotional disorders. |
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