The situational reflection of reality in activity theory and the concept of situation awareness in cognitive psychology

This article presents new data from the implementation of Activity Theory and integrates it with some concepts of cognitive psychology. The main focus is on orienting activity, which is directed to comprehending and interpreting reality as well as predicting future events' significance for the performance of present events. The concept of orienting activity is directly related to what is known as Situation Awareness (SA) in the US. However, the concept of orienting activity is broader than that of SA. Orientation and comprehension of a situation includes not only conscious and verbally logical components, but also unconscious components. The imaginative elements of the activity and the non-verbalized meaning of the situation are important in the unconscious reflection of reality. This paper describes SA as one of the important function mechanisms involved in the dynamic reflection of the situation. Other important elements of this dynamic reflection are its emotional and motivational components.