Effects of walking exercise on cognitive appraisal, depressive mood, and attentional resources in self-focused attention

Abstract

Self-focused attention can contribute to increasing depressive moods. It is known that attending to self-referen-tial stimuli that direct attention inward might induce self-focused attention. Distractions help to disengage attention from self-referential stimuli. However, the eeects of distractions in attenuating the detrimental innu-ences of self-focused attention on cognitive appraisal, depressive mood, and attentional resources, while attending to self-referential stimuli have not been investigated. is study examined whether walking exercise, which is a behavioral distraction technique, would attenuate the eeects of self-focused attention. Undergraduate and graduate students N42 participated in walking exercise, while attending to self-referential stimuli. en, they completed the Cognitive Appraisal Rating Scale CARS , the depressive mood subscale of the Mood Inventory, and a digit span task, for assessing cognitive appraisal, depressive mood, and attentional resources, respectively. Results indicated that the walking exercise reduced the scores for appraisal for eeect, which is a subscale of CARS, and lowered depressive mood scores. However, walking exercise had no eeect on attentional resource scores. ese results suggest that walking exercise modiied the appraisal for eeect and reduce depressive mood while attending to self-referential stimuli.