1.1 Social cognition: meaning and beliefs  (Page 4/7)

So for all the stimuli in your environment (when you see something or when you need to think about something that you become aware of), your mind asks yourself various questions (unconsciously) such as, "Does this involve me personally", "Am I to be moved or not", "What is it", "What does it mean", "Am I to act or not", etc. This is important because, unconsciously without your awareness, you are asking yourself these questions about various inputs and things in your environment all of the time. You are constantly analyzing things and going through a complex thought process that you aren't aware of.

• Fifth, from the viewpoint of conditions specifying termination of the process, meaning action and meaning generation again differ markedly. Meaning action either terminates when meaning values are established that trigger innate or conditioned responses, or it develops gradually into meaning generation owing to the occurrence of signals for molar action. The conditions under which meaning generation terminates are far less clearly delineated. All too often the meaning values established in the course of meaning generation do not pertain directly to the referent, that is, the input itself, but to aspects of its meaning established in previous stages of meaning processing. Thus, they are meaning values of meaning values. This is obviously the case with regard to those aspects of comprehensive meaning that relate to the personal relevance of the input. In principle, meaning generation could go on for a very long time. Moreover, even in the next stage of cognitive elaboration, conditions may arise that necessitate repeated meaning generation in order to produce missing information. Thus, in a certain sense, meaning generation overlaps with the next stage, or at least is kept smoldering in anticipation of further possible utilizaiton. Hence the difficulty of specifying precisely when meaning generation stops. In practice, however, meaning generation subsides and is replace by other forms of cognitive activity when sufficient information has accumulated to make possible an answer to the question "What does it mean to me and for me?" insofar as action is concerned. If the answer specifies "action is required," the next stage of cognitive elaboration is initiated by the new question, "What am I to do?" If, however, the answer is "no action required," meaning generation does not necessarily stop. It may continue for a while in order to attain adequate coding for the purpose of memory storage or simply for the sake of curiosity or maintaining cognitive activity. Yet it usually terminates because new inputs may dominate the scene of cognitive processing.

So the thinking process that involves behavior (meaning action) terminates when a behavior response is necessary. So that means that you think, then you stop thinking when you need to respond with a behavior. Or you start thinking about the way in which you are going to actually do the response instead of thinking about the 'meaning' behind it. Meaning generation, on the other hand, can continue in a long string of connected ideas, not necessarily connected to the stimulus. Your mind is kept aware of if this information might be useful in the current world you are in. That would be the question, "What does it mean to me and for me". When people think, that question is always being considered unconsciously. Your mind then asks the questions, "Is action required", and then "What am I to do?".