Metacognitive monitoring of attentional bias toward threat in anxiety.

Abstract

Are anxious individuals aware that their attention is excessively captured by threat-related stimuli? If so, how accurate is this awareness? Accurate attentional monitoring is crucial for effective attentional control, as it enables individuals to recognize whether and to what extent attentional control is necessary. The present study investigates how accurately individuals (recruited in 2023-2024) monitor their attentional bias toward an angry face and whether this ability is associated with anxiety levels. Adopting a novel approach that involves average facial expression and attentional allocation judgments, we demonstrate that individuals can monitor their attentional bias toward an angry face. However, anxious individuals tend to underestimate their greater attentional bias, despite having an intact ability to monitor trial-by-trial variations in attentional bias; this may explain why they exhibit impaired attentional control. This study provides a novel theoretical framework that incorporates attentional monitoring processes to more comprehensively understand the relationship between attention and anxiety. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).