Awareness, in psychology,[1] is a concept about knowing, perceiving and being cognizant of events. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some information when that information is directly available to bring to bear in the direction of a wide range of behavioral actions.[2] The concept is often synonymous to consciousness and is also understood as being consciousness itself.[3]
The states of awareness are also associated with the states of experience so that the structure represented in awareness is mirrored in the structure of experience.[2]
Awareness is a relative concept. It may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception.[3] It is analogous to sensing something, a process distinguished from observing and perceiving (which involves a basic process of acquainting with the items we perceive).[4] Awareness or "to sense" can be described as something that occurs when the brain is activated in certain ways, such as when the color red is what is seen once the retina is stimulated by light waves.[4] This conceptualization is posited amid the difficulty in developing an analytic definition of awareness or sensory awareness.[4]
Awareness is also associated with consciousness in the sense that this concept denotes a fundamental experience such as a feeling or intuition that accompanies the experience of phenomena.[5] Specifically, this is referred to as awareness of experience. As for consciousness, it has been postulated to undergo continuously changing levels.[6]
Peripheral awareness refers to the human ability to process information at the periphery of attention, such as acknowledging distant sounds of people outside while siting indoors and concentrating on a specific task such as reading.[7][8] Peripheral vision is defined as the perception of visual stimuli at or near the edge of the field of vision and the capacity to perceive such stimuli. [9] Peripheral awareness is the capacity to perceive stimuli that is not directly in front of us and is in relation to all five senses.
This type of awareness allows for being prepared to respond to unexpected events. For example, walking down a busy street while talking to a friend, peripheral awareness will allow for alertness to potential hazards such as cars or pedestrians coming into proximity that may not have been noticed otherwise.