Two-levels of mental states attribution: from automaticity to voluntariness

In this paper, I introduce the hypothesis that there are two levels of mindreading. The first level refers to automatic-preconceptual phenomena that specify a primitive understanding of another person's mind. It is based on early-imitation, action and emotion recognition. The second level of mindreading is conceptual and voluntary. It is based on intentionality, empathy, and higher depths of reasoning. The activities in both levels are generated by internal simulative mechanisms. This hypothesis is based on human and nonhuman neuroscientific evidence. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.