Abstract

?In everday language, the word ?attention? implies control of access to consciousness, and we adopt this usage here. Attention itself can be either voluntary or automatic. This can be readily modeled in the theory. Further, a contrastive analysis of spontaneously self?attributed vs. self?alien experiences suggests that ?self? can be interpreted as the more enduring, higher levels of the dominant context hierarchy, which create continuity over the changing flow of events. Since context is by definition unconscious in GW theory, self in this sense is thought to be inherently unconscious as well. This proposal is consistent with a great deal of objective evidence. However, aspects of self may become known through ?conscious self-monitoring,? a process that ??is useful for self-evaluation and self?control. The results of conscious self-monitoring are combined with self?evaluation criteria, presumably of social origin, to produce a stable ?self?concept?, which functions as a supervisory system within the larger self organization