Key concepts and aspects of Jean Piaget theory
Piaget theory is one of the most thorough accounts offered in terms
of cognitive development as he was interested in how children learn and adapt
to the world. He believed that in order for adaptation to occur, there must be continuous
interaction between the child and the outside the world. However,most
psychologists assumed that children reason in basically the same as the adults.
On the other hand, Piaget challenged this view asserting that the thought of
infants and children is qualitatively distinct, not a miniature version of
adult thought.
Moreover, in Piaget cognitive development theory, the key importance
were given to the two process of adaptations. According to the Piaget (1954),
process of adaptation occurred through two ways which were through the process
of assimilation and the process of accommodation. “Assimilation
refers to the way in which people transform incoming information so that it
fits their existing way of thinking and Accommodation refers to the way in
which people adapt their thinking to new experiences” (Siegler & Alibali, 1986) .
Assimilation is important throughout the life, not just in early
childhood. Now let’s try to explore the process of assimilation using an
example. “Lily, a 2-year-old who is learning to name animals, Lily has a dog at
home, and according to her “doggiescheme,” “doggies” are animals that have four
feet and fur and that bark and fetch balls. Oneday, riding in the car with her
mother, Lily points to a field with several cows and exclaims,“Look, Mommy,
doggies!” She is excited to see so many “doggies,” especially ones so large” (Cook & Grey, 2005) . With the help of
the example above, it is easier to understand that Lily is trying to see these
new animals by thinking about them as somethingshe already understands: “doggies”.Therefore,
this is an example of assimilation, the process ofbringing new objects or
information into a scheme that already exists. Piaget describes, this types of
assimilation as functional as simulation. This means the tendency to use
a mental structure as soon as it becomes available.
Moreover, in the process of accommodation, new information is
modification of the existing schemata in the understanding. In the example
illustrated in the previous paragraph, if Lily’s mother comments, “NO those are
Cows. They are bigger then dogs. And see udders underneath? Cows give us
milk”. However, these types of comments
place Lily into cognitive disequilibrium (confusion). Therefore, she
will realize that, she has never seen an udder under dogs and also dogs are
small in size. In order to resolve her cognitive conflict, Lily adjusts her
understanding of animals. With that she will create a new schema and add new
information about the dog (dogs are small and do not give milks). These
adjustments are known as example of accommodation. Where Lily modified her old
schemes or created a new one in order to fit better with assimilated
information. However, if she wanted to build a cognitive equilibrium she
needs to get more expose to the other animals. “Equilibration id the process by
which children integrate their many particular piece of knowledge of the world
into a undefined whole” (Siegler & Alibali, 1986) .
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