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. 2015 Apr 23;6:500. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500

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Copyright © 2015 Webb and Graziano.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Five possible hypotheses about the relationship between awareness and attention. (A) Awareness and attention are the same. (B) Awareness precedes attention. One must become aware of something before attending to it. (C) Attention precedes awareness. One must attend to something before it can enter awareness. (D) Awareness and attention are independent processes in the brain. (E) The hypothesis proposed in the present article. In the attention schema theory, awareness is part of the control machinery for attention. It is the internal model of attention, the attention schema. Without awareness, attention is still possible but suffers from deficits in control.