In this study, effects of chronic pain and pain-related fear on orienting and maintenance of attention towards pain stimuli were evaluated by tracking eye movements (EM) within a dot-probe paradigm.The sample comprised matched chronic pain (n=24) and pain-free (n=24) groups in gender, age, education years in university, depression, anxiety and stress level,each of which included lower and higher fear of pain (FOP) subgroups.Participants completed a dot-probe task wherein EM were assessed during the presentation of sensory pain-neutral, health catastrophe-neutral and neutral-neutral word pairs matched in Chinese character strokes and frequency of occurrence in the Chinese language.The Biases indices included Orienting of Attention (direction bias, first fixation latency bias) and Maintenance of Attention (first fixation duration bias, average fixation duration bias, overall gaze duration bias, reaction time biases).Data analyses indicated that higher FOP levels were associated with biases in (1) first fixation direction towards threatening health catastrophe words and, among participants with chronic pain,(2) subsequent escape from threat as reflected by shorter first fixation durations on health catastrophe words compared to their pain-free cohorts.As stimuli persisted for 2000ms, no group differences were observed for overall gaze durations or reaction times to probes that followed.In sum, this research identified specific biases in visual attention related to FOP and chronic pain during early stages of information processing that are not evident on the basis of later behavior responses.The effects of chronic pain and fear of pain (FOP) on attention were examined by tracking eye-movements within a dot-probe paradigm.Heightened FOP corresponded to biases in first fixation towards health catastrophe words and, among participants with chronic pain,subsequent gaze shifts away from these threats.No reaction time differences emerged.