A reflective level of arousal achieves figure-ground discrimination without meaning.
Reflective Level of Arousal: With an increase in the energy investment into the perceptual process, a strong figure ground structure emerges.
What is lacking at this point is the energy to complete the process, which would terminate in meaning. At this point, meaning is lacking, although the figure is clearly structured.
For example, I know a person (not mentioning names) who has on at least one occasion in his life gone through a red light.
This happened because he was thinking about (investing energy in) some other thought, like the ticket he had gotten for speeding the day before. The figure (red light) had been clearly perceived, but not meaningfully decoded and hence, not reacted to.