Assimilation and Accomodation in Every Interaction

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Assimilation and Accomodation in Every Interaction

The two processes that are involved in every interaction are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation means gaining some knowledge and making it fit in with what you already know. This is a necessity in order to develop our cognitive structures. This is a process that everyone encounters even though they may not be aware of when it is happening. Our perceptions of things are enhanced when something of the outside world is assimilated or added into our internal world. Accommodation is the changing of one’s structure of thought. During this process, the gaining of new knowledge fails to co-exist with what we already know. Therefore, we must accommodate or adjust our previous way of thinking to maintain stability. These two processes interact to form a state of equilibrium.

Equilibrium is something we all strive to obtain because it is here that we are most confident with our state of being. The Piagetian model of equilibration displays how these two processes work together to reach a state of stability. When people gain new information, they are at a state of instability. This is when the two processes (assimilation and accommodation) are brought into effect. We use both of these techniques to maintain a state of equilibrium. With assimilation, equilibrium is established by returning to the original way of thinking with added knowledge. The only difference is that with accommodation the previous state of equilibrium is combined with an entirely new category. The model also demonstrates a third way of dealing with new information. By ignoring the information, no knowledge is gained, yet equilibrium is still maintained.

Assimilation and accommodation ...

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...ge. The child also starts to think logically, but only to a certain degree. This also helps the child’s accommodation skills. To give an example of accommodation, I will refer to the example I used to show assimilation. A child is outside during the day and sees the sun and at night the child sees the moon. The child notices that the light source during the day is a lot brighter than of the light source during the night. The child is able to distinguish between the two and knows that the two images are not the same. The child is able to make categorical links between the two objects.

Both of these skills take place throughout a child’s life and continue through their adult life. Although one may predominate at any given time, they are inseparable and relate to each other. These processes work together to allow the child to adapt to his or her environment.

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