Schemas
Definition
Schema
A package of organised prior knowledge about a person, object or situation, built up from experience, that guides what you expect, notice and remember.
- A schema is a mental framework, an organised package of everything you know about one kind of thing.
- You hold schemas for objects, for people and for everyday events, such as what usually happens at a birthday party.
- A newborn starts with a few simple action schemas, such as sucking and grasping, and every later schema is built out from those.
- Piaget argued that children build understanding by forming schemas from experience and then reshaping them.
- Two processes do that reshaping: assimilation and accommodation.
Key Idea
- A child fits new experience into the schema they already have.
- The schema is only rebuilt when the fit fails badly enough to be uncomfortable.
- Enough rebuilt schemas is what carries a child into the next of Piaget's stages.
Assimilation
Definition
Assimilation
In Piaget's theory, fitting new information into an existing schema without changing that schema, so the new experience is understood using what you already know.
- Assimilation: fitting a new experience into a schema you already hold.
- The new case is added to the schema as it stands.
- This works smoothly when the new thing really is like what the schema already describes.
- It lets a child make quick sense of something unfamiliar using knowledge they already trust, even when that guess turns out to be wrong.
Example
- A toddler cousin has only ever met the family's small dog, so their animal schema is a dog schema.
- At a petting farm they point at a sheep and shout doggie.
- The sheep has been assimilated into the dog schema because it is furry and has four legs.
Accommodation
Definition
Accommodation
In Piaget's theory, changing an existing schema or creating a new one because new information will not fit what you already know.
- Accommodation: changing a schema, or building a new one, because the old one no longer fits.
- It is needed when a new experience clashes too badly with what the schema predicted.
- The child either stretches the existing schema or splits a separate one off from it.
- Told that the animal is a sheep, the cousin builds a sheep schema of its own, kept apart from dogs.
- The updated knowledge is more accurate, but building a schema takes real mental effort.
Common Mistake
- In assimilation the cousin's dog schema stays as it is and gains the sheep as one more member.
- In accommodation the cousin builds a separate sheep schema, so the dog schema itself has changed.
Equilibration
Definition
Equilibration
The process of returning to a comfortable mental balance after new information has caused confusion, achieved by adapting your schemas until they fit the world again.
- A child meets new experiences all day, and each one either matches a schema or clashes with it.
- When it matches, they assimilate it and the schema grows.
- When it clashes, the schema no longer makes sense of the world, and Piaget said that mismatch is uncomfortable.
- That discomfort is what pushes the child to accommodate.
- Once the updated schema fits the new information, mental balance returns, and that return to balance is equilibration.
- A game that throws a much harder level at you works the same way, where losing over and over is the mismatch and working out the new tactic is the update that settles it.
- Reshape enough schemas and the child moves into the next of Piaget's four stages.
Note
- Assimilation and accommodation carry on many times a day throughout life, so they are processes rather than stages.
- A single experience often involves both, because a child can take in one part of it with an existing schema and rebuild another part.
- Schema is the same idea that returns in reconstructive memory, where what a person already knows shapes what they recall.
Turning this into marks
- When assimilation and accommodation are both asked for, say what happens to the schema in each one rather than describing the same event twice.
- Name the schema you mean, such as a dog schema, because saying the child learns something new does not secure the knowledge mark.
- The mark most often lost is describing accommodation as adding a new case to a schema, when the schema itself has to change.
- Use the word equilibration for the return to balance, and say that the clash came first.
Self review
- What is a schema?
- What happens to a schema during assimilation?
- What happens to a schema during accommodation?
- Give one example of a child accommodating a schema.
- What is equilibration, and why does a clash between schema and experience lead to it?
