Attentional bias related issues and applications in sport context

There are a wealth of studies focusing on the relationship between anxiety and attentional bias. The causal relationship has been also proven by interventional studies. However, anxiety is rarely discussed from the perspective of attentional bias in athletes. Although previous study has introduced the relationship and mechanisms between anxiety and attentional bias, they approximately focus on the paradigms and models related to attentional bias. Therefore, this paper intended to provide an extensive review on previous studies relevant to attentional bias and proposed prospective research direction in sport context. This review was divided into two parts. The first part aimed at discussing the relation between attentional bias and anxiety, which included the brief introduction of the definition and components of attentional bias. In the second part, information from previous studies was categorized based on the main issues which were discussed from the psychophysiological views, attentional bias training and application in athletic field. At the end, the future research direction was provided.