Attentional bias toward school-related academic and social threat among test-anxious undergraduate students

Anxiety in the context of school is a complex and prevalent problem, often characterized by fear of negative academic (i.e., test anxiety) and social evaluation. Despite evidence that attentional biases contribute to the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, biased attention toward school-related threat remains understudied. Undergraduate participants (N = 211) completed a dot-probe paradigm assessing attentional bias toward two types of school threat stimuli: academic (e.g., failed test) and social (e.g., social exclusion) threat images. High test-anxious participants displayed an attentional bias toward academic threat, though this pattern was more pronounced among test-anxious females compared to test-anxious males. Low test-anxious participants, regardless of gender, directed attention away from threat stimuli. Attentional biases toward school threat were uniquely linked to test anxiety, and not a function of elevated general anxiety or depression symptoms. Findings provide a vital step in research efforts considering attentional biases as maladaptive cognitive processes in test anxiety.