1.1 Social cognition: meaning and beliefs  (Page 2/7)

So a stimulus-response could be very simple, like how insects respond to each other. Humans respond sometimes in a similar fashion, they take only one stimulus or trigger and respond based off of just that, without conceptualizing it or interpreting something in a more complex way. There is going to be some sort of personal relevance a stimulus has for the person, this is going to make the response and the mental processing involved much more complicated.

• Third, from the viewpoint of processes, meaning action may be described as scanning stored schemata, reconstructing these schemata into meaning values, and matching these reconstructed models against the stimulus representation. This set of processes, designed to establish initial meaning, is enacted at least party in parallel. Meaning generation, too, is anchored in this triad of scanning-reconstructing-matching processes, but each process in the triad is more elaborate than in the case of meaning action. Within the framework of meaning generation more meaning dimensions are used as questions, general hypotheses, or restricted expectations that guide the scanning process. Moreover, the scanning procedures themselves may be more complex. If we assume that there exist search strategies different in complexity and refinement, then meaning action is restricted to the use of the simplest, fastest, and most superficial strategy, whereas meaning generation also utilizes the more elaborate, intensive, and sophisticated ones. Similarly, in meaning action reconstructing is manifested mainly in combining the retrieved elements into some kind of model; in meaning generation it is manifested also in generating the elements to be combined in the model. As a consequence of the relative complexity of scnaning and reconstructing, the product of meaning generation and the matching procedure to which it is subjected iwht regard to the input representation are also far more elaborate. For example, as compared to initial meaning, comprehensive meaning consists of many more meaning values representing many more meaning dimensions. In fact, potentially any of the 21 meaning dimensions may be used. The relations between the meaning values themselves are rendered more complex, for instance, by bonding two meaning values, each reflecting a different meaning dimension, by means of a relation reflecting a third meaning dimension different from those reflected by the bonded meaning values. Also, the complexity of the relations increases in view of the fact that any two meaning values may be related in terms of more than one relation, and may be embedded within the context of several unites of interrelated meaning values. This would exemplify enhanced use of the principle of successive contextual embedding characteristic of meaning. Further, the relations between meaning values and the referent are also richer in the case of comprehensive meaning. Whereas initial meaning makes use primarily of the attributive and comparative relations and perhaps minimally also of the exemplifying-illustrative relation between meaning value and referent, comprehensive meaning also uses to no small extent the metaphoric-symbolic relation. This implies that comprehensive meaning also includes elements of personal-subjective symbolic meanings and not only components of interpersonally shared lexical meaning. Inclusion of personal symbolic components introduces into comprehensive meaning the complex interaction characteristic of this mode of meaning. In sum, both meaning action and meaning generation are sets of processes for the elaboration of meaning. Yet since meaning generation uses more widely and extensively the available possibilities for the elaboration of meaning, the product of meaning generation is richer in contents, more complex and differentiated in structure, as well as stronger and more general in impact than the product of meaning action.