The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences or information to fit our pre-existing beliefs.
In assimilation, children make sense of the world by applying what they already know.
It involves fitting reality and what they experience into their current cognitive structure.
Verywell / Cindy Chung
A child’s understanding of how the world works, therefore, filters and influences how they interpret reality.
In early childhood, children are constantly assimilating new information and experiences into their existing knowledge about the world.
However, this process does not end there.
One day, you glance out your window and see the child throwing a snowball at your car.
It seems out of character and rather rude.
How do you interpret this new information?
The child is still kind, but now you know they also have a mischievous side to their personality.
With accommodation, old ideas are changed or even replaced based on new information.
During thesensorimotor stage, for example, some information is assimilated, while some experiences must be accommodated.
Examples of Assimilation
Piaget did not believe that children just passively take in information.
Examples of assimilation include:
Another common example would behow children learnabout different types of animals.
When the child encounters a horse, they might assimilate this information and immediately call the animal a dog.
In each of these examples, the individual is adding information to their existing schema.
Of course, assimilation can have its drawbacks.
There are times when new information doesn’t fit neatly into an existing category or schema in our minds.
This may lead toerrors in judgment.
An example would be a child calling a skunk a “kitty.”
Key Takeaways
Assimilation helps us adapt to the world around us.
It enhances our knowledge by using past experiences to interpret new information.
Understanding assimilation also helps us understand how we learn and process information.
It also makes it easier to see how judgment errors can sometimes be made based on existing schemas.
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