Losing a close friend or family member is a common, but profoundly stressful life experience. For young adults in particular, bereavement is associated with depression, sleep difficulties, and other psychological sequelae of stress. An experience of loss commonly prompts some level of cognitive processing as an attempt to make meaning, but little research has examined the longitudinal course of meaning making nor the effects of processing change on depression, sleep difficulties, and meaning made. Further, very little is known about individual regulatory resources that might determine whether meaning making attempts actually reduce distress over time. Attention regulation abilities such as executive control, attentional orienting, and alerting are common correlates of mood and sleep difficulties, but have yet to be examined in the context of post-loss meaning making, The present prospective longitudinal study of 117 recently bereaved college students examined change in depression, sleep disturbance, and loss comprehensibility (i.e., meaning made of loss) over nine weeks, depending on individual differences in attention regulation abilities. Most participants gradually improved over time, although adjustment was significantly impacted by exposure to stressful life events and intrapersonal attention regulation abilities. Specifically, stress exposure was associated with between- and within-person increases in cognitive processing of loss, and between-person differences in depression and sleep disturbance, but had minimal associations with loss comprehensibility. Further, participants with fast attentional orienting and strong executive control were most vulnerable to a prolonged course of unproductive rumination and sleep dysregulation. Participants with fast alerting also experienced greater sleep difficulties concurrent to loss processing, although strong alerting appeared to facilitate improvements in adjustment over time. Thus, those who can flexibly direct attention away from distressing thoughts of loss toward other activities may experience short-term improvements in sleep, whereas strong executive control and rapid re-orientation toward new stimuli may prolong engagement with distressing thoughts. Future research should integrate objective measures of attention with self-reported adjustment to stress to better understand reciprocal links between emotional distress, sleep, cognitive processing, and meaning. When students experience prolonged distress following loss, cognitive-behavioral therapies that enhance regulatory flexibility and reduce focus on negative emotional content may be particularly useful. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]