I Like You, Telling a Girl You Like Her, You're Signaling It

In the literature, it's called showing high relationship specific investment. It basically means, are you paying attention to the girl and are you telling her you like her? And I don't necessarily mean literally saying, hey, I like you,. Tell a girl you like her, you're signaling it. You're either saying it directly or you're saying it without directly saying it. Either way, you're sort of signaling, you're showing what you actually mean, right?