Define the concepts of adaptation, assimilation, and accommodation. Explain how the balance between ...

Adaptation involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment. It consists of two complementary activities: assimilation and accommodation. During assimilation, we use our current schemes to interpret the external world. In accommodation, we create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing that our current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely. According to Piaget, the balance between assimilation and accommodation varies over time. When children are not changing much, they assimilate more than they accommodate—a steady, comfortable state that Piaget called cognitive equilibrium. During times of rapid cognitive change, children are in a state of disequilibrium, or cognitive discomfort. Realizing that new information does not match their current schemes, they shift from assimilation to accommodation. After modifying their schemes, they move back toward assimilation, exercising their newly changed structures until they are ready to be modified again. Each time this back-and-forth movement between equilibrium and disequilibrium occurs, more effective schemes are produced.