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According to Piaget (1952), infants and children are active in their own development not simply because they engage other people and the world, adapting their ways of thinking in response to their experiences. Through these interactions, individuals organize what they learn to construct and refine their own cognitive schemas, or concepts, ideas, and ways of interacting with the world. The earliest schemas are inborn motor responses, such as the reflex response that causes infants to close their fingers around an object when it touches their palm. As infants grow and develop, these early motor schemas are transformed into cognitive schemas, or thoughts and ideas. At every age, we rely on our schemas to make sense of the world, and our schemas are constantly adapting and developing in response to our experiences. Piaget also emphasized the importance of two developmental processes that enable us to cognitively adapt to our world: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation involves integrating a new experience into a preexisting schema. For example, suppose that 1-year-old Makayla uses the schema of “grab and shove into the mouth” to learn. She grabs and shoves a rattle into her mouth, learning about the rattle by using her preexisting schema. When Makayla comes across another object, such as Mommy’s keys, she transfers the schema to it—and assimilates the keys by grabbing and shoving them into her mouth. Makayla develops an understanding of the new objects through assimilation, by fitting them into her preexisting schema.

Sometimes we encounter experiences or information that do not fit within an existing schema, so we must change the schema, adapting and modifying it in light of the new information. This process is called accommodation. For example, suppose Makayla encounters another object, a beach ball. She tries her schema of grab and shove, but the beach ball won’t fit into her mouth; perhaps she cannot even grab it. She must adapt her schema or create a new one in order to incorporate the new information—to learn about the beach ball. Makayla may squeeze and mouth the ball instead, accommodating or changing her schema to interact with the new object.

The processes of assimilation and accommodation enable people to adapt to their environment, absorbing the constant flux of information they encounter daily (see Figure 5.1). People—infants, children, and adults—constantly integrate new information into their schemas and continually encounter new information that requires them to modify their schemas. Piaget proposed that people naturally strive for cognitive equilibrium, a balance between the processes of assimilation and accommodation. When assimilation and accommodation are balanced, individuals are neither incorporating new information into their schemas nor changing their schemas in light of new information; instead, our schemas match the outside world and represent it clearly. But a state of cognitive equilibrium is rare and fleeting. More frequently, people experience a mismatch, or cognitive disequilibrium, between their schemas and the world.

Disequilibrium leads to cognitive growth because of the mismatch between schemas and reality. This mismatch leads to confusion and discomfort, which in turn motivate children to modify their cognitive schemas so that their view of the world matches reality. It is through assimilation and accommodation that this modification takes place so that cognitive equilibrium is restored. Children’s drive for cognitive equilibrium is the basis for cognitive change, propelling them through the four stages of cognitive development proposed by Piaget (refer to Chapter 1). With each advancing stage, children create and use more sophisticated cognitive schemas, enabling them to think, reason, and understand their world in more complex ways.

Description

Figure 5.1 Assimilation and Accommodation

Bobby sees a cat that fits his schema for kitty (left). He has never seen a cat like this before (middle). He must accommodate his schema for kitty to include a hairless cat (right).

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