The benefits of experiencing flow through distracting activities: flow reduces preoperative anxiety in children before surgery, but not postoperative difficulties.

Background: Distraction is a classic anxiety management strategy in preoperative setting with children: distracting activities take children's attention away from threatening clues. What is less clear is the differential effectiveness of this technique depending on the task, and the degree of children engagement with the distracting task. The present work examined the role of flow (state of intense concentration and absorption in the distracting task) on children's preoperative anxiety.