ABSTRACT
Vygotsky suggests the sociocultural activity serves as such an explanatory source. He thus broke the vicious circle within which the phenomena of consciousness used to be explained through the concept of consciousness, and similarly behaviour through the concept of behaviour, and established premises for a unified theory of behaviour and mind on the basis of sociocultural activity. The early cognitivist approach tended to exclude societal and cultural factors from its notion of context. The initial theorising in ecological psychology tended to focus on the description of settings and to ignore the relations between persons acting and those settings. Activity theory posits psychological development and thus psychological analysis as grounded in practical cultural activities. The symbolic approach understands psychology in terms of collective symbols and concepts. The individualistic approach emphasises individual construction of psychological functions from collective symbols and artefacts.
