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꩜ What Is a Processing Mode?

Conscious processing modes are not what you think, but how your thinking unfolds. Not your beliefs, but the operations through which information becomes perception, interpretation, judgment, and expression. Consciousness refers here, to subjective experience: the fact that there is something it is like to experience.

A single experience can involve sensation, memory, language, imagery, emotion, inference, attention, and deliberate reasoning. These functions interact, sometimes reinforcing one another, sometimes pulling in different directions. Their relationship matters more than any label we might assign to a person.

Mode vs. style vs. quality: A cognitive style describes a tendency or preference. A function describes an operation. Processing quality concerns how well that operation serves the task: its accuracy, flexibility, evidence, or effectiveness. Preferring imagery does not mean being incapable of verbal reasoning. Feeling certain does not make an intuition correct. Thinking analytically does not guarantee sound conclusions.

For a related discussion of preferences, see Cognitive Styles. The point here is different: to examine the architecture of an experience without reducing a person to a type.

The goal is not to discover your one true mode. It is to recognize what is happening, what is missing, and when another approach might help.

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꩜ Perception & Embodiment

Before we interpret an event, something must register. But sensation, perception, and bodily participation are not identical processes. The original Sensory vs. Symbolic and Embodied vs. Detached pairs placed several different phenomena on opposite ends of a single line. We can make the distinctions clearer without losing the original insight.

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Sensation and Perception

Sensation concerns the detection and encoding of information by sensory systems. Light reaches the eyes; vibrations reach the ears; changes inside the body contribute to sensations such as tension, hunger, and the beating of the heart. Perception concerns the organization and interpretation of such information into recognizable experiences.

Look at a lotus. The physical stimulus includes wavelengths of light and contrasts in shape. Perceptual processes help you see an organized flower rather than an unrelated collection of visual fragments. Conceptual knowledge may help you identify it as a lotus. Meaning comes into the experience through additional interpretation.

Perception is not a passive photograph of reality. Expectations, attention, prior learning, and contextual information can influence what is perceived. Yet the fact that perception is constructive does not mean every interpretation is equally accurate. External observations can still be checked and compared.

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Embodied Cognition

Embodied cognition examines how the body, action, and sensorimotor systems contribute to thinking. When you sketch a shape, reach toward an object, or notice bodily tension during a conversation, cognitive processing is situated within bodily activity, not sealed inside abstract thought.

This does not require the claim that every idea is a literal bodily signal. It means the body and its interaction with the environment can participate in how information is represented, understood, and acted upon. An artist may understand proportion differently after drawing it than after merely hearing it described.

The old word detached needs care. Reflectively stepping back from an emotional event is one kind of psychological distancing; dissociation is a different psychological phenomenon. Neither is simply the absence of embodiment. We will return to reflective distancing under cognitive regulation.

Integration key: Ask what you directly sensed, what you perceived as an organized event, and what you subsequently inferred. Those are related questions, not identical answers.

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꩜ Representation & Meaning

Once information is available, the mind can represent it in different formats and at different levels of generality. This section consolidates Abstract vs. Concrete, Perceptual vs. Conceptual, and Verbal vs. Nonverbal, while preserving symbolic interpretation as a distinct form of meaning-making.

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Perceptual and Conceptual Representation

Perceptual representations preserve aspects of experience, such as the appearance of a flower, the sound of a voice, or the spatial relation between two shapes. Conceptual representations support categorization, knowledge, and relationships that go beyond the immediate sensory encounter.

You can see a particular lotus, recognize it as a plant, remember another lotus that is not present, and discuss its ecological role. These are connected but distinguishable cognitive operations. Concepts can also be grounded in perceptual and motor experience. Conceptual does not mean disconnected from the body.

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Abstract and Concrete

Concrete processing keeps attention near particular instances, observable details, and specific circumstances. Abstract processing represents general properties, principles, categories, and relationships that apply across instances.

A particular disagreement between two people is concrete; the general concept of conflict is abstract. A specific flower is concrete; a principle about adaptation is abstract. You can reason conceptually about a concrete event, or use vivid imagery to think about an abstract principle.

The practical advantage of concrete representation is precision and contextual detail. Its limitation appears when particulars obscure a broader principle. Abstract representation makes generalization and theory-building possible; its limitation appears when a generalization ignores what is distinctive about a specific case.

Integration key: Move in both directions. Ask, “What specific observation supports this idea?” and “What broader relationship could this example illustrate?” Abstract thought gives a framework; concrete evidence gives it a test.

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Verbal and Nonverbal Representation

Verbal representation uses words and linguistic relationships: inner speech, written statements, narratives, labels, and explicit explanations. Nonverbal representation includes imagery, spatial organization, movement-related representations, and other forms of information that are not themselves sentences.

You may see a composition clearly before finding words for it. Or you may discover what you think by writing a paragraph. These are different representational resources, not measures of intelligence or awareness. Some tasks benefit from language; others are easier to approach visually, spatially, or through action.

The relationship is often reciprocal. Words evoke images. Images call up words. A diagram may make a written explanation possible, while a sentence may sharpen a previously vague mental picture. Paivio’s work on dual coding provides an influential research framework for verbal and nonverbal representations.

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Symbolic Interpretation

A symbol represents something beyond itself through a learned, contextual, or culturally shared relationship. Language and mathematics rely on symbolic representation, and so do stories, rituals, art, dreams, and archetypes.

A lotus is physically a flower; in some traditions it also symbolizes purity, awakening, or renewal. The symbolic interpretation can carry genuine personal or cultural meaning. But recognizing a symbol is not evidence that an external event was intentionally arranged to communicate a private message. Meaning, association, and verification are different questions.

Symbolic processing therefore belongs within representation and interpretation. It is not the opposite of sensory experience. The same lotus can be sensorially vivid, conceptually understood, and symbolically meaningful at once.

The sensory world presents a flower. Perception organizes it. Concepts identify it. Abstraction relates it to a broader principle. Symbolism asks what else it may stand for.

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꩜ Thought Organization & Time

How ideas are represented is one question. How they become linked is another. The original Linear vs. Nonlinear and Associative vs. Sequential pairs were largely describing the same organizational contrast. We can combine them while avoiding the misleading suggestion that associative thought has no logic or sequential thought cannot handle complexity.

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Sequential and Associative Processing

Sequential processing organizes thought through an ordered progression: a procedure, an argument, a chronology, or a series of steps. Following a recipe, constructing a proof, and outlining an essay often require sequence. It is useful when order, dependencies, or an explicit chain of reasoning matter.

Associative processing connects ideas through learned relationships, resemblance, memory, emotion, proximity, or shared context. A scent reminds you of childhood; a painting calls to mind a philosophical concept; one metaphor opens the door to several others. Associative processing is especially relevant to memory retrieval and creative idea generation.

A crucial distinction: associative thought still unfolds in time, and a sequence can be built entirely from associations. They describe different organizing principles, not two mutually exclusive mental engines.

The word nonlinear has particular meanings in mathematics and systems theory. A system can be nonlinear while a person reasons about it sequentially. For ordinary cognition, associative or networked thought is usually the clearer term when we mean ideas linked through many relationships rather than a prescribed order.

Strength and limitation: Sequential reasoning clarifies what follows from what, but may become rigid if its starting assumptions are wrong. Associative thinking can surface unexpected connections, but those connections still require examination. A striking association is a possibility to investigate, not a conclusion to declare.

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Temporal Representation

The original Temporal vs. Atemporal pair belongs here as a related but separate question: How does the mind represent time? We can organize memories chronologically, imagine possible futures, mentally revisit the past, or experience subjective time as stretched, compressed, or discontinuous.

A dream may contain scenes that do not follow ordinary chronology. Recalling a life event through association can also move backward and forward across years. Neither means cognition has literally escaped time. Nonchronological representation and altered time perception are clearer descriptions than calling thought atemporal.

Integration key: If a thought feels tangled, ask two separate questions. “Which ideas are connected?” and “In what temporal order did these events occur?” A relationship between memories is not always a timeline.

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꩜ Appraisal & Judgment

Here the mind moves from representing information toward evaluating its significance and deciding what to believe or do. This reorganizes Emotional vs. Rational, Intuitive vs. Analytical, and Pattern-Based vs. Data-Based. They overlap because an emotion, a pattern, and a judgment can arise in response to the same event. But their functions are not interchangeable.

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Affective Appraisal: What Matters?

Affective appraisal concerns the emotional significance of an event: Is it relevant to my goals? Does it matter to me? Does it suggest loss, possibility, threat, relief, or conflict? Emotional responses can direct attention, influence memory, and help prioritize action.

Emotion is not the opposite of reason. A person can analyze a situation while feeling intensely; a calm person can still make an illogical judgment. Affective meaning can inform a decision without determining whether a factual claim is correct.

Suppose a friend becomes quiet. You feel uneasiness because the relationship matters. The feeling is real as an experience. It does not prove the friend is angry. It tells you that something about the situation has acquired emotional significance.

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Intuitive and Analytical Judgment

Intuitive judgment is often rapid and relies on recognition, learned associations, and prior experience without conscious access to every intermediate step. Analytical judgment involves more explicit examination, comparisons, reasoning steps, and revision.

Intuition can be skilled, particularly where the environment contains learnable regularities and someone has received meaningful feedback. It can also be biased or confidently wrong. Kahneman and Klein emphasize that subjective certainty by itself is not a trustworthy measure of expertise.

Analytical processing can test alternatives and expose contradictions. It can also be slow, exhausting, or based on mistaken premises. Reasoning is not correct merely because it is lengthy. These approaches can cooperate: a quick interpretation generates a hypothesis; analysis tests it; experience updates later intuitive recognition.

Integration key: When intuition speaks, ask what it might be recognizing. When analysis speaks, ask whether its assumptions and evidence are sound. Neither speed nor deliberation automatically guarantees truth.

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Pattern Recognition and Evidence Evaluation

The original Pattern-Based vs. Data-Based distinction describes two things that are not opposites. Data are observations or measurements. Pattern recognition identifies relationships or regularities among representations or observations. Evidence evaluation asks whether a perceived pattern is credible, relevant, and sufficient to support a conclusion.

Imagine recording sleep duration and afternoon fatigue across several days. The numbers are data. Noticing that fatigue tends to rise after shorter sleep is pattern recognition. Asking whether the sample is large enough, whether other factors could explain the pattern, and whether it happens again is evidence evaluation.

Pattern recognition can occur intuitively or analytically. Evidence can be numerical, observational, or qualitative. What matters is how carefully the inference is supported, not whether we call ourselves a “pattern person” or a “data person.”

A complete judgment: register the event, notice its personal significance, generate one or more interpretations, examine supporting and conflicting information, and remain willing to revise. Those operations can overlap, repeat, or happen in a different order.

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꩜ Attention

Attention determines which information receives priority. Our original Global vs. Local and Monofocal vs. Multifocal pairs were worth preserving because they answer different questions. We are also relocating Internal vs. External Attention here, distinct from expressing a thought privately or publicly.

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Global and Local: The Scale of Focus

Global processing prioritizes an overall configuration, context, or whole. Local processing prioritizes particular elements, features, or details within that whole. David Navon’s classic visual-perception research examined how global and local features can compete for attention.

An artist may first notice the overall composition of a canvas and then examine one edge of a flower. A systems thinker may examine how a whole institution operates, then focus on one specific policy. These are extensions of the global/local idea into broader reasoning, not proof that visual-perception experiments establish a universal “global thinker” personality.

Global is not automatically abstract, and local is not automatically concrete. Someone can look globally at an entirely physical scene or locally at a highly abstract argument.

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Focused and Divided: The Allocation of Attention

Focused attention prioritizes one target or task. Divided attention distributes resources across more than one target or task. Switching rapidly between tasks is related, but not identical to attending to several at once.

A person can study the entire composition of one painting with focused attention. They can also monitor details across several tasks while dividing or shifting attention. This is why global/local and focused/divided should remain separate dimensions.

Dividing attention is not inherently more advanced. Some activities combine readily, while others compete for limited cognitive resources. Multitasking often carries costs in time, error, or comprehension.

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Internal and External: The Orientation of Attention

Externally directed attention prioritizes currently available sensory information: the page in front of you, a voice, a moving object. Internally directed attention prioritizes represented information such as memories, mental images, or an internally rehearsed sentence.

This is different from external expression. You can attend externally while thinking silently, or speak aloud about something remembered internally. One distinction concerns the object of attention; the other concerns how thought is formulated and expressed.

Integration key: Ask three questions, not one: Am I attending to the whole or a detail? One target or several? Something present in the environment or something internally represented?

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꩜ Engagement & Expression

This family combines the useful parts of Active vs. Receptive, Internal vs. External Processing, and Reflective vs. Expressive. We are not erasing reflection. We are moving it to the regulatory level, where it can occur during either quiet thought or outward activity.

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Receptive and Generative Engagement

Receptive engagement prioritizes attending to, registering, and integrating incoming information: listening, looking, reading, observing. Generative engagement prioritizes producing, transforming, applying, questioning, or elaborating information: reasoning, composing, experimenting, explaining.

Receptive does not mean cognitively inactive. A person listening quietly may be making complex inferences. Likewise, visible activity does not guarantee depth of understanding. Reception and generation often happen together: hearing a question can initiate an internal answer before the question is finished.

This is why generative is more precise than active for our purposes. All living cognitive processing involves activity, but its immediate function may lean toward registering information or generating something with it.

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Internal Formulation and External Expression

Internal formulation includes privately developing an idea through inner speech, imagery, felt sense, or other representations. External expression gives it an observable form: a sentence, a drawing, a gesture, a performance, a diagram, a decision, or an action.

Expression is not merely the final delivery of a finished thought. Writing can reveal contradictions that were invisible in the mind. Speaking can expose an assumption. Painting can make a previously imagined shape newly available to perception. The product of expression becomes new input for thought.

Consider a creative cycle: observe the subject, imagine a composition, put paint on canvas, step back, notice the result, reconsider, and make another mark. No single mode owns the entire process. Reception and generation alternate, overlap, and continually inform each other.

Reflective processing is better described through metacognition and reconsideration than as the opposite of expression. You can reflect silently or reflect by writing, talking, or creating.

Integration key: When an idea remains vague, changing its form may help. Say it aloud, sketch it, write it, or test it through action. The point is not to force an output, but to let expression become part of inquiry.

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꩜ Cognitive Control & Automaticity

The original Intentional vs. Involuntary pair grouped together several properties that cognitive science treats separately. We keep the useful distinction between controlled and automatic processing, while distinguishing voluntary action, involuntary responses, and conscious awareness.

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Controlled and Automatic Processing

Controlled processing is directed or regulated through cognitive control and often demands deliberate attention, monitoring, and effort. It may be needed when learning an unfamiliar task, resisting a habitual response, or comparing competing explanations.

Automatic processing can run with relatively little deliberate supervision. Learned word recognition, practiced movements, and familiar associations are common examples. Automatic does not mean stupid, primitive, or necessarily unconscious. It often makes skilled performance possible.

Automaticity is not one switch. Processes can vary in speed, effort, intention, awareness, and controllability. Moors and De Houwer’s theoretical review examines these features rather than treating them as perfectly interchangeable.

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Voluntary and Involuntary Responses

A voluntary response is intentionally initiated or directed. An involuntary response occurs without such initiation, as with a sudden startle reaction. Yet a voluntary goal can recruit automatic operations: an experienced painter can intentionally begin a work while many familiar hand movements require little explicit planning.

Similarly, a spontaneous thought may appear vividly in awareness without having been intentionally produced. The presence of awareness does not prove the presence of control.

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Conscious and Unconscious Processing

These words concern whether an aspect of a process or its result is available to subjective experience. Awareness, control, and automaticity are three separate questions: Am I experiencing it? Can I direct it? How much deliberate regulation does it require?

A person can consciously notice an involuntary response. A person can intentionally read while much of the underlying word-recognition process occurs without awareness of every computation. We should not assume that all automatic activity is unconscious or all conscious activity is voluntary.

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Practice, Habits, and Flexibility

Early learning often requires explicit effort. With appropriate repetition and feedback, some operations become faster and less effortful. Habits can also emerge through repeated responses in recurring contexts. These changes may free attention for other demands, but habits can become unhelpful when conditions change.

Learning to notice when an automatic response no longer serves a situation is one reason cognitive control matters. Sometimes the task is to automate a useful skill; sometimes it is to interrupt an unhelpful habit; sometimes it is to stop over-controlling a skill already learned.

Integration key: Ask whether this task needs deliberate supervision, efficient routine, or a change of habit. The most conscious-feeling process is not automatically the best one.

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꩜ Metacognition & Dynamic Layering

Your consciousness is not a menu. It is a symphony. But the metaphor becomes more useful once we understand that its parts are different functions playing together, not seventeen fixed types competing for command.

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Metacognition: Monitoring and Regulation

Metacognition is our capacity to monitor and regulate aspects of our own cognitive activity. Monitoring includes noticing confusion, confidence, attention, or the limits of one’s knowledge. Regulation includes choosing a strategy, changing pace, checking an interpretation, asking for clarification, or returning to evidence.

The influential Nelson and Narens framework distinguishes metacognitive monitoring and control. Neither requires perfect self-knowledge. A person can be highly confident and mistaken, or notice that something feels wrong without knowing why.

This framework is not a claim that a separate little observer sits inside the mind. It describes relations among cognitive processes: some activity becomes information for further evaluation and adjustment.

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One Experience, Many Functions

Imagine receiving unexpected criticism of a painting. You read the words (perception and verbal representation), feel disappointed (affective appraisal), recognize a similarity to earlier criticism (association and pattern recognition), and quickly suspect rejection (intuitive judgment). You then examine exactly what was said (local attention and analysis), perhaps consider a broader artistic context (global attention and abstraction), and decide whether the feedback reveals a real weakness.

Writing your response can change your understanding. Remembering a specific successful technique may help. You may step away, return later, and revise the painting. The expressed result becomes new information. This is dynamic layering: the same experience engages several operations, and the output of one becomes material for another.

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Context, Habits, and the Problem of Fixed Labels

People do not use all functions equally in every situation. Task demands, fatigue, motivation, learned habits, emotion, developmental differences, and the environment can influence which operations are emphasized.

The original image of “suppressed modes becoming shadows” remains powerful as a metaphor for neglected capacities or avoidance patterns. But it is not a validated scientific rule: someone who was discouraged from speaking up does not necessarily develop a specific, predictable cognitive symptom. Development and coping are more variable than that.

It’s also important not to mistake a familiar preference for an immutable identity. “I’m an intuitive person” can describe a tendency. It does not mean that analytic evaluation is inaccessible. “I’m a visual thinker” can describe a useful form of representation without establishing that written or verbal instruction cannot work.

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Processing Mode Is Not Processing Quality

This may be the most important principle in the article. Just because someone is analytical does not mean their conclusion is correct. Just because someone is intuitive does not mean their impression is true. Just because a symbol is meaningful does not make it evidence of an external cause.

Processing quality depends on the task. Useful questions include: Is the observation accurate? Is the reasoning valid? Are alternative explanations being considered? Is the conclusion supported by evidence? Is the strategy flexible enough to change when new information arrives?

More processes operating simultaneously does not automatically produce better understanding. Sometimes dividing attention introduces error. Sometimes a quick, well-practiced judgment is more effective than prolonged analysis. Adaptation is more important than maximal mental activity.

Self-awareness is not merely noticing which way a thought moves. It is learning to examine the movement, test the destination, and change course when necessary.

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꩜ Why This Matters

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In Relationships: Understanding Miscommunication

Two people may focus on different parts of the same conversation. One attends to the exact words; another registers tone and emotional significance. One offers a practical solution; another wants their experience to be understood first. These are differences in what is noticed, represented, or prioritized, not proof that one person is more conscious.

Instead of assuming another person’s intention, ask: “When you said that, what did you mean?” or “Would it help if I listened, explained my reasoning, or suggested a next step?” Understanding a cognitive difference does not excuse disrespect, but it can prevent a difference in approach from becoming an unnecessary conflict.

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In Self-Discovery: Know Thy Filter

Our recurring habits of attention and interpretation shape what we notice and remember. It can be useful to recognize that we routinely generalize too quickly, become absorbed in details, look for patterns, or respond emotionally before checking an assumption. These are modifiable tendencies, not permanent identities.

The goal is not to become an entirely different person. It is to gain options: to inspect a belief, return to concrete evidence, engage imagination, or ask what an emotional reaction is telling us about our values.

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In Learning: Fit the Strategy to the Task

Education benefits from multiple routes into understanding: language, examples, images, practice, explanation, feedback, and opportunities to revisit difficult material. Students can have real preferences and different support needs without belonging to fixed learning-style categories.

The popular claim that instruction must match each student’s diagnosed “visual,” “auditory,” or similar learning style lacks convincing evidence as a general teaching rule. The review by Pashler and colleagues examines this problem. A better question is which representation, activity, and feedback serve the content and learner in this moment.

To learn a concept, begin with a concrete example, identify the abstract principle, explain it in your own words, draw or diagram it when useful, and test whether you can apply it to a new situation. Different strategies reveal different gaps.

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In Emotional Wellbeing: Notice Without Overinterpreting

Strong emotional reactions may influence attention, memory, and interpretation. Under stress, people may find some kinds of reflection or flexible problem-solving more difficult. Practices such as stepping back to consider another perspective, grounding attention in the present, or writing about an event may help in particular circumstances.

That does not mean every difficulty comes from a “blocked mode,” nor does changing a cognitive strategy substitute for appropriate mental-health support. Clinical dissociation, for example, is not simply detached thinking. The useful invitation here is to notice responses with curiosity while respecting the complexity of trauma and psychological health.

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In Creation: Thought Becoming Form

Creative work continually crosses these functions. An image may appear before words; a memory may activate an association; analytical choices may organize materials; a physical mark may reveal something unexpected; reflection may transform the next decision.

Intuition does not have to fight analysis. Symbolic interpretation does not replace observation. A concept does not become less meaningful when examined concretely. In art, research, teaching, and building a business, movement between functions can be part of the work itself.

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A Simple Practice: Observe, Identify, Test, Adjust

• Observe: What am I noticing right now: a sensation, memory, idea, emotion, or external event?
• Identify: Am I making an association, following steps, interpreting a symbol, evaluating evidence, or shifting attention?
• Test: What supports my interpretation? What would count against it? Am I confusing significance with certainty?
• Adjust: Would a more concrete example, broader context, deliberate analysis, rest, conversation, diagram, or different attentional strategy help?

This is not a rigid four-stage mental mechanism. It is a practical metacognitive prompt that can be revisited whenever your current approach stops working.

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꩜ Final Transmission: Know Your Code

The way you process the world is patterned, historical, embodied, and adaptable. It carries traces of practice, education, relationships, temperament, memory, and circumstance. But no single label is the whole of you.

You are not merely a sequential thinker, a symbolic interpreter, or an intuitive mind. You can perceive without immediately concluding. You can feel without treating feeling as proof. You can imagine without abandoning evidence. You can analyze without abandoning meaning.

Your mind does not operate through one isolated channel. It receives, represents, associates, evaluates, acts, revises, and learns. Some operations become habitual; others demand concentrated effort. Some arrive uninvited. Others are shaped by deliberate choice.

And somewhere within that changing process, there is the possibility of noticing how it unfolds.

You are a library of forms. Each way of processing is a resource, not a prison. Understanding the relationships between them does not define the limits of your mind. It gives you more ways to work with it.

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꩜ Resources & Further Reading

The functional families in this article are an editorial synthesis, not a formally validated taxonomy. The following work informs particular distinctions and mechanisms, rather than proving this entire arrangement as one scientific model.

• Kozhevnikov (2007), Cognitive Styles in the Context of Modern Psychology — cognitive styles and integrative approaches.
• Evans & Stanovich (2013), Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition — distinctions and debates concerning intuitive and deliberative reasoning.
• Moors & De Houwer (2006), Automaticity: A Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis — the multiple dimensions of automatic processing.
• Kahneman & Klein (2009), Conditions for Intuitive Expertise — when intuitive judgment is likely to be reliable.
• Navon (1977), Forest Before Trees — global and local visual processing.
• Chun, Golomb & Turk-Browne (2011), A Taxonomy of External and Internal Attention — attentional orientation and selection.
• Paivio (1990), Dual Coding Theory — verbal and nonverbal representation.
• Barsalou (1999), Perceptual Symbol Systems — relationships between perception and conceptual knowledge.
• Alderson-Day & Fernyhough (2015), Inner Speech — forms and functions of internal language.
• Wood & Rünger (2016), Psychology of Habit — habit formation and automatic behavior.
• Nelson & Narens (1990), Metamemory: A Theoretical Framework and New Findings — metacognitive monitoring and control.
• Pashler et al. (2008), Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence — critical evaluation of fixed learning-style matching.
• Trope & Liberman, Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance — abstract/concrete representation and psychological distance.
• Pessoa, On the Relationship Between Emotion and Cognition — interactions of emotional and cognitive processes.