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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Cogn Neurosci. 2011 Jan 1;2(2):98–113. doi: 10.1080/17588928.2011.565121

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Awareness as a social perceptual model of attention. Bill has his visual attention on the cup. Abel, observing Bill, constructs a model of Bill’s mental state using specialized neuronal machinery for social perception. Part of that model is the proposition that Bill is aware of the cup. In this formulation, awareness is a perceptual property that is constructed to represent the attentional state of a brain. We perceive awareness in other people. We can use the same neuronal machinery of social perception to perceive awareness in ourselves.