Distraction

Key claims

• People with anxiety have a high motivation to change.
• A distraction can be defined as an urge to switch tasks.
• Distractibility is not a permanent trait.
• Distractibility is a state of training.
• Some people develop certain habits with less training than others.
• There are no people who necessarily give in to distractions.
• A distraction is an urge to switch tasks
• When working you are using two systems of attention: task attention vs. predictive attention.
• Task attention uses your central executive function network.
• Predictive attention, also called default attention, uses the default mode network.
• Task attention works in the present moment: this present step.
• Predictive attention concerns the past or future: the next step.
• We have deliberate and automated appraisals.
• We also have deliberate (task) and automated (predictive) attention.
• A distraction is when your predictive attention automatically takes you off the path you deliberately set for your task attention.
• The pull of predictive attention is a function of the salience of the next step.
• Salience is produced by reinforcement.

• Mirroring anxiety, how salience is generated:
  • Giving in to distractions trains your nucleus accumbens to label things as salient.
  • The nucleus accumbens detects salience.
  • The nucleus accumbens creates the craving upon detection.
  • The nucleus accumbens watches your response.
  • Avoidance retrains the nucleus accumbens to be less triggerable: habituation.
  • While avoiding a salient trigger, the craving level will increase, peak, and decrease as long as the avoidance behavior is maintained.
  • Further approach trains your nucleus accumbens to be more triggerable: sensitization of salience.
  • Giving in to a distraction reinforces the distractor, making it more salient for the future.

• The reinforcement of distractors involves both negative reinforcement (relief) and positive reinforcement (enjoyment of distractor).
• The greater the reinforcement, the greater the salience generated by giving in to distractor, so the more distracting it is the next time (sensitization).