Hi all,
Have you ever been lost in a town you were familiar with, but had not mastered your way around. You might know what directions the streets ran (n,s,e,w). You might be familiar with some of the major roads and highways. You might have gone to many of the locations in town, but you just hadn't been to every one to know how to get there if someone asked you.
Do you remember a time when you found yourself in a new place and you'd gotten there by accident. That is, you hadn't paid attention to your path?
You might have felt a little confusion, fuzzy kind of, about how to get to the next place that you needed to go. But then, you had an Aha! You noticed something that looked familiar. And from that familiarity, you were able to come up with where you currently were in relation to somewhere you'd been. You *oriented* yourself to your surroundings and drew conclusions about your location.
That is the state of activation - spontaneous or otherwise. An orientation to unfamiliar surroundings by deduction from familiar ideas.
-CS
[This message has been edited by CommonSense (edited April 15, 2004).]
