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Attentional Biases to Facial Emotions372autistic adults. In the current study, we attempted to diminish this knowledge gap by measuring autistic trait levels and relating them to attentional biases toward various emotional expressions.Present StudyThe goal of this study was to examine whether variability in attentional biases toward different emotional facial expressions can be explained by trait levels associated with ASD and SAD in the general population. More specifically, we administered a modified version of the emotional dot-probe task on a touchscreen (see van Berlo et al., 2020) in public settings (community sample) as well as in a lab setting (student sample). To replicate as well as expand current findings on attentional biases to specific emotions, we paired angry, happy, sad, and fearful expressions with neutral expressions in the dot-probe task, and assessed autistic and social anxiety traits via self-reports. The hypotheses, including statistical models to test them, were preregistered on the Open Science Framework after data collection but before accessing the data (see https://osf.io/8pwgy for the preregistration, including a more detailed description of the hypotheses). In line with the proposed adaptive function of increased attention to emotions serving as communicative signals (Crivelli & Fridlund, 2018) as well as the results from most dot-probe studies to date (however, see Puls & Rothermund, 2018), we expected to observe an attentional bias toward all emotions. Given the high relevance of angry facial expressions as (social) threat signals, attentional biases might especially be pronounced for expressions of anger (e.g., Valk et al., 2015). We expected that variability in this bias could be explained by social anxiety traits, particularly that higher social anxiety trait levels would be associated with stronger biases. The possibility of a stronger attentional bias to other emotional expressions in individuals with higher levels of social anxiety traits was additionally explored, including the goal to contrast increased initial vigilance with a difficulty to disengage from emotional expressions. Given the inconclusive literature on the relationship between autism and attentional biases in adults, we hypothesized that, due to an avoidance of the eye region, a less pronounced bias to emotional facial expressions should become apparent with higher autistic trait levels. The bias to angry faces should, however, not be linked to autistic trait levels, as suggested by past research in clinical populations (Fan et al., 2020). Further, the comorbidity between social anxiety and autism has been discussed, yet not confirmed, as being a potential source of a threat bias in individuals with ASD (e.g.,