Information-processing studies have shown an attentional bias (AB) towards threat cues in individuals with anxiety disorders. Research has consistently shown that AB to threat may play a causal role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Recent empirical evidence has demonstrated support for Attention Retraining (AR) to modify AB to threat, resulting in reductions of anxiety. Currently, AR approaches have not been systematically tested in individuals with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of a computer-based attention retraining (CBAR) treatment for clinical levels of PTSD using a modified dot-probe paradigm. A single-case time-series design was employed with a treatment and post-treatment period, following baseline. Results indicated significant reductions in trauma-related symptoms, attention to threat cues, state anxiety and depression, along with a significant increase in coping self-efficacy. AB change for the group was not significant. A significant relationship between AB change and PTSD symptoms was found. The results were discussed from the standpoint of the viability of AR for trauma. / Master of Science

Yes / It has been suggested that the isolation rearing paradigm models certain aspects of schizophrenia symptomatology. This study aimed to investigate whether isolation rearing impairs rats’ performance in two models of cognition: the novel object recognition (NOR) and attentional set-shifting tasks, tests of episodic memory and executive function, respectively. Two cohorts of female Hooded-Lister rats were used in these experiments. Animals were housed in social isolation or in groups of five from weaning, post-natal day 28. The first cohort was tested in the NOR test with inter-trial intervals (ITIs) of 1 min up to 6 h. The second cohort was trained and tested in the attentional set-shifting task. In the NOR test, isolates were only able to discriminate between the novel and familiar objects up to 1-h ITI, whereas socially reared animals remembered the familiar object up to a 4-h ITI. In the attentional set-shifting task, isolates were significantly and selectively impaired in the extra-dimensional shift phase of the task (P < 0.01). Rats reared in isolation show impaired episodic memory in the NOR task and reduced ability to shift attention between stimulus dimensions in the attentional set-shifting task. Because schizophrenic patients show similar deficits in performance in these cognitive domains, these data further support isolation rearing as a putative preclinical model of the cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia.

Football penalty kicks are having increasing influence in today’s professional game. Despite this, little scientific evidence currently exists to ascertain the mechanisms behind performance failure in this task and/or the efficacy of training designed to improve penalty shooting. In a football penalty kick it has been reported that the majority of kickers do not look to the area they wish to place the ball; preferring to focus on the ‘keeper and predict anticipatory movements before shooting. Such a strategy seems counterproductive and contradictory to current research findings regarding visually guided aiming. Coordination of eye and limb movements has been shown to be essential for the production of accurate motor responses. A disruption to this coordination not only seems to negatively affect performance, but subsequent motor responses seem to follow direction of gaze. Thus, where the eyes lead actions tend to follow. In study 1, ten participants were asked to kick a standard sized football to alternate corners of a goal, whilst looking centrally and whilst looking where they intended to hit. This disruption of eye-limb coordination brought about a 15% reduction in kicking accuracy. When participants were asked to fixate centrally, their shots hit more centrally (17cm) than when they were allowed to look where they intended to hit. These results were in spite of no significant differences between the number of missed shots, preparation time and ball speed data across conditions. We concluded that centrally focused fixations dragged resultant motor actions inwards towards more central target locations. Put simply, where the eyes looked shots tended to follow. The second study sought to test the predictions of attentional control theory (ACT) in a sporting environment in order to establish how anxiety affects performance in penalty kicks. Fourteen experienced footballers took penalty kicks under low- and high-threat counterbalanced conditions while wearing a gaze registration system. Fixations to target locations (goalkeeper and goal area) were determined using frame-by-frame analysis. When anxious, footballers made faster first fixations and fixated for significantly longer toward the goalkeeper. This disruption in gaze behaviour brought about significant reductions in shooting accuracy, with shots becoming significantly centralized and within the goalkeeper’s reach. These findings support the predictions of ACT, as anxious participants were more likely to focus on the “threatening” goalkeeper, owing to an increased influence of the stimulus-driven attentional control system. A further prediction of ACT is that when anxious, performers are more likely to be distracted, particularly if the distracter is threat related. When facing penalty kicks in football (soccer), goalkeepers frequently incorporate strategies that are designed to distract the kicker. However, no direct empirical evidence exists to ascertain what effect such visual distractions have on the attentional control, and performance, of footballers. In the third study, eighteen experienced footballers took five penalty kicks under counterbalanced conditions of threat (low vs. high) and goalkeeper movement (stationary vs. waving arms) while wearing eye-tracking equipment. Results suggested that participants were more distracted by a moving goalkeeper than a stationary one and struggled to disengage from a moving goalkeeper under situations of high threat. Significantly more penalties were saved on trials when the goalkeeper was moving and shots were also generally hit closer to the goalkeeper (centrally) on these trials. The results provide partial support for the predictions of attentional control theory and implications for kickers and goalkeepers are discussed. The previous studies showed that anxiety can disrupt visual attention, visuomotor control and subsequent shot location in penalty kicks. However, optimal visual attention has been trained in other far aiming skills, improving performance and resistance to pressure. In study 4, we therefore asked a team of ten university soccer players to follow a quiet eye (QE; Vickers, 1996) training program, designed to align gaze with aiming intention to optimal scoring zones, over a seven week period. Performance and gaze parameters were compared to a placebo group (ten players) who received no instruction, but practiced the same number of penalty kicks over the same time frame. Results from a retention test indicated that the QE trained group had more effective visual attentional control; were significantly more accurate; and had 50% fewer shots saved by the goalkeeper than the placebo group. Both groups then competed in a penalty shootout to explore the influence of anxiety on attentional control and shooting accuracy. Under the pressure of the shootout the QE trained group failed to maintain their accuracy advantage, despite maintaining more distal aiming fixations of longer duration. The results therefore provide only partial support for the effectiveness of brief QE training interventions for experienced performers. This series of studies are the first to explore the gaze behaviour of football penalty takers in a quest to uncover and understand anxiety’s negative influence on attentional control and performance. They are also the first to explore the efficacy of goalkeeper distractions and training in improving performance from both the goalkeeper’s and kicker’s perspective. The results of these studies conclude that when anxious, penalty takers show an attentional bias toward the ‘threatening’ goalkeeper that can be increased and utilised by a goalkeeper employing distraction techniques and that penalty takers do benefit, to some extent, from a gaze-based pre-shot routine

Visual attentional capture is a form of visual attentional selection that is automatic and involuntary in nature, and is of high adaptive value as it allows visual attention to be oriented in a reflexive manner towards visual information without necessarily being guided by pre-existing knowledge, goals, and plans. According to the load-hypothesis (Lavie &amp; De Fockert, 2005), attentional capture of salient stimuli increases under load on working memory due to disruption of stimulus-processing priorities. Moreover, it has been proposed that maintenance of task-irrelevant verbal information increases distractor interference in singleton search by increasing attentional capture of salient, but task-irrelevant, color singletons. This hypothesis was tested in the present study by having participants complete several succeeding trials of singleton search while simultaneously maintaining digits in working memory. The presence of task-irrelevant color singletons in the search array of a singleton search task led to increased response times, indicating attentional capture. However, the cost to response times associated with distractor presence did not increase under load on working memory, indicating that distractor interference may not be affected by load on working memory when task-irrelevant verbal information is maintained over an extended period of time. Individual differences in action video game playing and trait anxiety were considered and excluded as possible confounders.

This paper describes a sequence of experiments addressing basic questions about the control of visual attention and the relationship between attention and object recognition. This work reviews compelling findings addressing attentional control on the basis of high-level perceptual properties. In five experiments observers were presented with a rapid sequence of object photographs and instructed to either detect or selectively encode a verbally cued object category. When these object categories (e.g. "baseball") were preceded by contextual images associated with a given object category (e.g. "baseball diamond"), observers were less likely to accurately report information about the target item. This effect obtained with both detection and discrimination measures. This evidence of attentional capture is particularly strong because associated contexts typically enhance object detection or discrimination, whereas here they harmed performance. These findings demonstrate that observers use relatively abstract and elaborated representations when selecting visual objects on the basis of category. Further, even when observers attempt to ignore depictions of associated contexts these images engage perceptual processing. That is, while participants were able to determine the target of their search categorically, they had relatively little control over the specific types of representations and information employed when performing an object search task. After reviewing these five experiments, conclusions regarding the use of object-context association knowledge in vision are addressed.

Submitted by PPG Psicologia (psicologia-pg@pucrs.br) on 2018-05-17T22:24:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 GUSTAVO_RAMOS_SILVA_DIS.pdf: 5111917 bytes, checksum: f33b0b4365f06eb2178942b893f56de5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Caroline Xavier (caroline.xavier@pucrs.br) on 2018-05-30T18:09:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 GUSTAVO_RAMOS_SILVA_DIS.pdf: 5111917 bytes, checksum: f33b0b4365f06eb2178942b893f56de5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-30T18:14:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GUSTAVO_RAMOS_SILVA_DIS.pdf: 5111917 bytes, checksum: f33b0b4365f06eb2178942b893f56de5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-08 / A aten??o ? um construto multifacetado, que esteve historicamente por diversas vezes no centro de discuss?es filos?ficas e psicol?gicas. O car?ter influente da aten??o sobre diversos outros processos psicol?gicos (e.g., consci?ncia, mem?ria, tomada de decis?o) salienta sua import?ncia, e logicamente resulta em uma dificuldade na segrega??o de suas fronteiras te?ricas e na defini??o clara desse fen?meno. Em um campo de pesquisa emp?rica atual sobre aten??o, vieses da orienta??o atencional para est?mulos amea?adores s?o investigados. Por?m, falta aos modelos embasados em 10 achados emp?ricos nesse campo a sustenta??o em modelos te?ricos bem estabelecidos de aten??o, e existe confus?o nos estudos experimentais publicados. Al?m disso, tarefas experimentais para avaliar vieses da aten??o para a amea?a necessitam de integra??o com novas tecnologias e estrat?gias de an?lise, as quais podem gerar mais sensibilidade, validade e confiabilidade, como o rastreamento ocular e o novo ?ndice de variabilidade do vi?s atencional (ABV). Esta disserta??o est? inclu?da na sub?rea de n?mero 7.07.02.03-9 do Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico (CNPq) ? Psicologia Experimental (Processos Cognitivos e Atencionais) ? a qual integra a grande ?rea de Psicologia. Dois estudos s?o apresentados para suprir a necessidade de avan?o no estudo sobre aten??o, controle atencional (AC) e vi?s atencional em rela??o ? amea?a (ABT). Em primeiro lugar, um estudo te?rico fornece uma vis?o hist?rica da pesquisa psicol?gica da aten??o, desde os fundadores da Psicologia moderna at? a pesquisa neuropsicol?gica integrativa atual e os modelos orientados empiricamente. Esta revis?o busca esclarecer conceitos da aten??o e diferenciar esses conceitos dos de outros dom?nios psicol?gicos. Em vez de segregar ?reas de pesquisa, ? prov?vel que essa estrat?gia promova um di?logo entre campos que pesquisam o mesmo fen?meno - mas o medem de forma diferente e atribuem-lhe nomes diferentes. Na sequ?ncia dessa revis?o te?rica, ? apresentado um estudo emp?rico, que prop?e duas adapta??es de tarefas experimentais cl?ssicas para medir o ABT: a Tarefa Dot-Probe (DPT) e a Tarefa Stroop Emocional (EST). Na EST, o desenho da tarefa foi alterado para levar em conta considera??es te?ricas importantes e para melhor adaptar a tarefa ? medida de ABV. Na DPT, uma integra??o surpreendentemente rara de tempos de rea??o e medidas de rastreamento ocular ? estabelecida, e novos ?ndices para calcular o ABT e o ABV s?o propostos. A confiabilidade e validade dos ?ndices em ambas as 11 tarefas foi investigada com estudantes universit?rios e atrav?s da diferencia??o dos mesmos ?ndices entre grupos de sintomas altos vs. baixos de ansiedade e estresse p?straum?tico. A import?ncia de progressivamente melhorar as qualidades psicom?tricas dessas tarefas experimentais ? discutida em profundidade levando em conta os achados do estudo, incluindo recomenda??es para futuras adapta??es dessas tarefas / Attention is a multifaceted construct, one that has been at the center of discussions across several moments in the history of philosophy and psychology. The characteristic of attention to influence and regulate many other psychological process (e.g., consciousness, memory, decision-making) stresses its importance, and logically results in a hardship in segregating its theoretical boundaries and clearly defining this phenomenon. In a current empirical field of research on attention, biases of attentional orientation to threatening stimuli are investigated. However, models generated from empirical findings lack sustentation on well-established theoretical models of attention, and confusion exists across published experimental studies. Furthermore, experimental tasks to assess biases towards threat require integration with new operationalization and analysis strategies, which can provide better sensitivity, validity and measurement reliability, such as eye tracking and the novel index of attentional bias variability (ABV). This dissertation is included in the subarea number 7.07.02.03-9 of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico (CNPq) ? Experimental Psychology (Attentional and Cognitive Processes) ? which integrates the broader area of Psychology. Two studies are presented to answer to the need of advancing research about attention, attentional control (AC) and attentional bias relative to threat (ABT). Firstly, a theoretical study provides a historical overview of psychological research on attention, from the founders of modern Psychology to current neuropsychological integrative research and empirically-oriented models. This review is expected to clarify constructs of attention and to differentiate these constructs from those of other Psychological domains. Instead of segregating research fields, this is likely to promote a 9 dialogue between fields that research the same phenomena ? but measure them differently and attribute to them different names. Following this theoretical review, an empirical study is presented, which proposes two adaptations of classical experimental tasks to measure ABT: the DotProbe Task (DPT) and the Emotional Stroop Task (EST). On the EST, task design is altered to account for important theoretical considerations and to better adapt the task to the measurement of ABV. On the DPT, a surprisingly rare integration of reaction times and eye tracking measures is established, and novel indices to calculate ABT and ABV are proposed. The reliability and validity of indices in both tasks is investigated with university students and through the differentiation of such indices between groups of high vs. low symptoms of anxiety and posttraumatic stress. The importance of pursuing the improvement of psychometric qualities of experimental tasks is discussed in depth upon the findings of the study, including recommendations to future experimental designs.

O trabalho objetivou analisar os fatores que influenciam a mobilização da atenção automática visual. Nas tarefas diárias, o Sistema Nervoso Central seleciona os estímulos mais relevantes para as tarefas. Para entender o quê influencia a mobilização atencional, conduzimos três experimentos com análise do tempo de reação a um estímulo vai em relação a um não-vai em voluntários humanos. Utilizamos um estímulo abrupto anterior ao aparecimento dos estímulos alvos para capturar a atenção automática na mesma posição ou na oposta ao aparecimento do estímulo alvo, para medir o efeito atencional. No 1º experimento, analisamos a influência da semelhança dos estímulos negativo e positivo e obtivemos o efeito atencional. Em seguida, pesquisamos a influência da semelhança do estímulo precedente com a do estímulo positivo e não encontramos evidências a respeito. Por último, verificamos como a estratégia atencional influencia no efeito atencional, mas não houve tal efeito. Concluímos que o fator crítico para a mobilização eficaz da atenção automática é a discriminabilidade entre os estímulos vai e não-vai. / This project investigated the important factors to mobilize the visual automatic attention. During our day, the Central Nervous System selects the most important stimulus to have a good performance in a task. For understanding which factors influence the attentional mobilization, we did three experiments analyzing the reaction time to a go stimuli comparing to a no go stimuli with human volunteers. We used an onset stimulus appearing before the go and no go stimuli at the same or at the opposite positions for having the attentional effect. At the first experiment, we researched the influence of go and no-go similarities and there was the attentional effect. Then, we investigated if the similarity between positive targets and cue is the critical factor but we didn\'t find the attentional effect. Finally, we checked the possibility of attentional effect to the CR by inducing the adoption of VL´s attentional set by volunteers, but there wasn\'t no effect. We concluded that the most important factor to an efficient mobilization of the automatic attention is the discriminability between the go and no-go stimuli.

O trabalho objetivou analisar os fatores que influenciam a mobilização da atenção automática visual. Nas tarefas diárias, o Sistema Nervoso Central seleciona os estímulos mais relevantes para as tarefas. Para entender o quê influencia a mobilização atencional, conduzimos três experimentos com análise do tempo de reação a um estímulo vai em relação a um não-vai em voluntários humanos. Utilizamos um estímulo abrupto anterior ao aparecimento dos estímulos alvos para capturar a atenção automática na mesma posição ou na oposta ao aparecimento do estímulo alvo, para medir o efeito atencional. No 1º experimento, analisamos a influência da semelhança dos estímulos negativo e positivo e obtivemos o efeito atencional. Em seguida, pesquisamos a influência da semelhança do estímulo precedente com a do estímulo positivo e não encontramos evidências a respeito. Por último, verificamos como a estratégia atencional influencia no efeito atencional, mas não houve tal efeito. Concluímos que o fator crítico para a mobilização eficaz da atenção automática é a discriminabilidade entre os estímulos vai e não-vai. / This project investigated the important factors to mobilize the visual automatic attention. During our day, the Central Nervous System selects the most important stimulus to have a good performance in a task. For understanding which factors influence the attentional mobilization, we did three experiments analyzing the reaction time to a go stimuli comparing to a no go stimuli with human volunteers. We used an onset stimulus appearing before the go and no go stimuli at the same or at the opposite positions for having the attentional effect. At the first experiment, we researched the influence of go and no-go similarities and there was the attentional effect. Then, we investigated if the similarity between positive targets and cue is the critical factor but we didn\'t find the attentional effect. Finally, we checked the possibility of attentional effect to the CR by inducing the adoption of VL´s attentional set by volunteers, but there wasn\'t no effect. We concluded that the most important factor to an efficient mobilization of the automatic attention is the discriminability between the go and no-go stimuli.

Au quotidien, notre attention sélective nous permet de sélectionner les informations pertinentes au regard de notre tâche et d'ignorer celles qui ne le sont pas, afin de maintenir un comportement cohérent avec nos buts. Néanmoins, dans certaines situations, un stimulus complètement non-pertinent peut capturer notre attention contre notre volonté et, de ce fait, produire un phénomène de distraction. La distraction a initialement été considérée comme essentiellement dépendante de la saillance perceptive des distracteurs. Cependant, de récentes études ont mis en évidence que les stimuli associés à l'obtention d'une récompense (i.e., disposant d'une histoire de récompense) sont également susceptibles de produire des effets de distraction particulièrement robustes et persistants (indépendamment de leur pertinence pour la tâche en cours et de leur saillance perceptive). Parallèlement, tout un autre champ de recherche a été consacré à l’étude du contrôle attentionnel qui peut être mis en place afin de prévenir une distraction par des stimuli visuellement saillants. Cependant, à ce jour, très peu de travaux ont tenté de manipuler la qualité du contrôle attentionnel qui peut être instauré pour éviter la distraction par des stimulus associés à une récompense. L'objectif de notre travail était donc de déterminer si, et si oui, dans quelles conditions, ces distracteurs pouvaient être ignorés efficacement ou, au contraire, pouvaient résister au contrôle attentionnel. Dans sept études, nous avons associé des stimuli visuels initialement neutres à une récompense (monétaire ou sociale) afin d’étudier leur impact sur les performances lorsqu’ils apparaissaient comme distracteurs dans des tâches recherche visuelle. Nous avons manipulé la qualité du contrôle attentionnel en faisant varier les contraintes perceptives (i.e., charge perceptive : Études 1 et 2), cognitives (i.e., charge cognitive : Étude 3) ou sensorielles (i.e., dégradation sensorielle : Études 4-7) imposées par la tâche. Nous avons mis en évidence que l'interférence provoquée par un distracteur associé à une forte récompense monétaire, contrairement à celle provoquée par des distracteurs uniquement saillants, peut résister à l'augmentation de la charge perceptive (Étude 1). L'analyse des potentiels cérébraux évoqués par ces distracteurs (Etude 2) suggère que cet effet puisse résulter d’une capture attentionnelle (N2pc) accrue en charge perceptive faible et d’une suppression attentionnelle (Pd) moins efficace en charge perceptive forte pour ces distracteurs. Contrairement à nos attentes, aucun effet de la récompense n'a été observé dans l’étude manipulant la charge cognitive (Étude 3), nous conduisant à proposer que notre manipulation ait pu drainer les ressources cognitives nécessaires à l'apprentissage de l’association distracteur-récompense. Ensuite, nous avons montré que l'augmentation de la pression temporelle (Étude 4-5), réputée pour favoriser la sélection précoce d'une cible, peut au contraire, dans certaines conditions, entrainer une plus grande difficulté à ignorer les distracteurs. Pour autant, dans ces conditions, le simple fait que des distracteurs récompensés puissent apparaître semble impacter encore plus négativement la sélection d'une cible que la pression temporelle elle-même. Enfin, nos deux dernières études (Études 6-7) ont mobilisé un cadre expérimental plus écologique, impliquant la recherche de cibles dans des photographies de scènes routières prises du point de vue d’un conducteur d’automobile et l’apparition de distracteurs récompensés sur l’écran d’un smartphone présent dans l’habitacle. Nous avons mis en évidence que la dégradation sensorielle de la cible (via une augmentation de l'intensité du brouillard) entraine une distraction plus importante pour des distracteurs associés à une récompense sociale, en particulier pour les personnes présentant un niveau élevé de FoMO (Fear of Missing Out ; peur de manquer une expérience sociale). [...] / In our daily activities, selective attention allow us to select task-relevant information among irrelevant ones, in order to maintain consistent, goal-directed behavior. However, sometimes, a completely irrelevant stimulus can capture our attention against our will and, as a result, produce a distraction phenomenon. Distraction was initially considered to be essentially dependent on the perceptual salience of the distractors. Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that stimuli associated with reward outcome (i.e., with a reward history) are also likely to produce particularly robust and persistent distraction effects (regardless of their relevance to the task at hand and their perceptual salience). Alongside, a large body of works has been devoted to the study of attentional control, which could prevent distraction by perceptually salient distractors. However, to date, very little work has attempted to manipulate the quality of the attentional control that could be implemented to avoid distraction by reward history. The objective of our work was therefore to determine whether, and if so, under what conditions, reward-distractors could be ignored or, on the contrary, could resist attentional control. Seven studies were conducted with neutral visual stimuli associated with (monetary or social) reward outcome, in order to investigate how they could affect task performance when they appeared as distractors in visual search tasks. Attentional control was manipulated by varying the perceptual (i.e., perceptual load: Studies 1 and 2), cognitive (i.e., cognitive load: Study 3) or sensory (i.e., sensory degradation: Studies 4-7) demands imposed by the task. We have shown that high-reward distractor interference resists to perceptual load increase, unlike that caused by only salient distractor (Study 1). Our event-related potentials study (Study 2) suggests that this effect may be due to an enhanced attentional capture (N2pc) under low perceptual load and by a less effective attentional suppression (Pd) under high perceptual load for high-reward distractors. Next, contrary to our expectations, no effect of reward history was observed when manipulating cognitive load (Study 3), leading us to propose that our manipulation could have drained the cognitive resources necessary to learn the distractor-reward association. Then, we have shown that the increase in time pressure (Studies 4-5), known to promote the early selection of relevant targets, could also enhanced the difficulty to ignore distractors under some circumstances. Nevertheless, in these conditions, the mere fact that rewarded distractors may appear seems to increase the difficulty to ignore the distractors, more than the time pressure itself. Finally, our last two studies (Studies 6-7) mobilized a more ecological visual search task, involving pictures of driving situations taken from a driver point-of-view, in which reward distractors were displayed on the screen of a smartphone in the vehicle cabin. The sensory degradation of the target (achieved by increasing the fog density outside the car) has led to greater distraction for distractors paired with a social reward, especially for people with a high level of FoMO (Fear of Missing Out; that is, the pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding social experiences from which one is absent). These results are discussed in the light of the literature on distraction by reward history and attentional control, in order to integrate the reward history into these models. Moreover, our observations are discussed under the scope of applied researches that focused on driver distraction, in which our work has a particular resonance.

Värdesättning av glädje är ett komplext fenomen relaterat till psykisk hälsa. Denna studie syftade till att undersöka värdesättning av glädje och dess specifika samband till emotionsreglering, emotionell uppmärksamhetskontroll och uppmärksamhetskontroll. Urvalet bestod av 252 vuxna deltagare (Målder=31.39, SDålder=12.09). Datainsamlingen gjordes via en online-enkät där deltagarna fick självskatta sin förmåga på skalorna: Valuing Happiness Scale, Emotional Attentional Control Scale, Attentional Control Scale och Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Resultatet visar att det finns specifika samband mellan värdesättning av glädje och uppmärksamhetskontroll i neutrala och emotionellt krävande situationer. Endast emotionell uppmärksamhetskontroll förklarar en statistiskt signifikant varians i värdesättning av glädje när man kontrollerar för de andra variablerna. Fortsättningsvis fann denna studie att det inte förekommer könsskillnader i värdesättning av glädje i en svensk kontext. Däremot finns det statistiskt signifikanta könsskillnader i strategin expressive suppression för emotionsreglering, där män använder strategin mer frekvent än kvinnor. Framtida studier bör undersöka värdesättning av glädje och relationen till dessa psykologiska variabler närmre och fylla i kunskapsluckorna som finns på detta komplexa fenomen. / Valuing happiness is a complex phenomenon related to mental health. This study aimed to investigate valuing happiness and its specific relationship to emotion regulation, emotional attentional control, and attentional control. The sample consisted of 252 adult participants (Mage=31.39, SDage=12.09). The data collection was done via an online survey where the participants had to self-assess their ability on the scales: Valuing Happiness Scale, Emotional Attentional Control Scale, Attentional Control Scale and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. The results show that there is a specific relationship between valuing happiness and attentional control in neutral and emotionally demanding situations. Only emotional attentional control explains statistically significant variance in valuing happiness when controlling for the other variables. Furthermore, this study found that there are no gender differences in valuing happiness in a Swedish context. In contrast, there are statistically significant gender differences in the expressive suppression strategy for emotion regulation, with men using the strategy more frequently than women. Future studies should examine the valuing of happiness and the relationship to these psychological variables more closely and fill in the knowledge gaps that exist regarding this complex phenomenon.