Fig. 1

Experimental task design. The paradigm involves an antecedent-focused and implicit cognitive reappraisal manipulation. Each participant was presented with a neutral/positive or negative Chinese description of the upcoming picture that stayed on the screen for 3 s, accompanied with a scrambled picture and a fixed cross in black (1–3 s). The negative picture was then shown for 4 s and the participant looked at the picture passively (the period of interest). Following this, participants were again shown the scrambled picture and fixed crosse for 3 s and were asked to use the keyboard to assess their emotional valence from 1 (none too negative) to 4 (extremely negative). Scrambled picture with a fixed black cross continue to be presented subsequently (3–5 s). As a sample in this tril, subjects view the following neutral/positive words: The actor from circus is rehearsing stunt. Each trial was 16 s long, and 50 trials (25 neutral/positive and 25 negative descriptions) were randomly shown in two runs, and all images were displayed a single time