Figure 1.

Theoretical schematic of the trade-off between present-moment and temporally extended elaborative attentional focus. Each sphere represents a potential aspect of experience: in the present moment these include physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts; in the past or anticipated future, these spheres are cognitive constructs rather than physical sensations. Typically, a small subset of available present moment experience is linked to a broad set of cognitive representations, providing an interpretive narrative (solid oval). By expanding the breadth of attention to include multiple aspects of present moment sensation such as thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations (dotted oval), attentional capacity for conceptual information such as judgments and personal narratives is reduced.