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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2009 Feb 10.
Published in final edited form as: Annu Rev Psychol. 2009;60:693–716. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Is social cognition special? Debates about the modularity of social information processing often revolve around the two dimensions shown in this schematic: Is the specialization at the level of processing algorithms (functional specialization) or at the level of the type of information being processed (stimulus selectivity)? A mechanism might be functionally monolithic and apply to a restricted set of stimuli (region 1) or applicable to a large domain of different kinds of stimuli (region 2). Alternatively, a mechanism might contribute to several distinct processes, but in the service of processing either a restricted stimulus class (region 3) or many (region 4). (Modified from Atkinson et al. 2008, Wheeler & Atkinson 2001.)