| Adaptation |
What it says: adapting to the world through assimilation and accommodation |
| Assimilation |
The process by which a person takes material into their mind from the environment, which may mean changing the evidence of their senses to make it fit. |
| Accommodation |
The difference made to one's mind or concepts by the process of assimilation.
Note that assimilation and accommodation go together: you can't have one without the other. |
| Classification |
The ability to group objects together on the basis of common features. |
| Class Inclusion |
The understanding, more advanced than simple classification, that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-sets of a larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called dogs. There is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the class of animals includes that of dogs) |
| Conservation |
The realisation that objects or sets of objects stay the same even when they are changed about or made to look different. |
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Decentration |
The ability to move away from one system of classification to another one as appropriate. |
| Egocentrism |
The belief that you are the centre of the universe and everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability to see the world as someone else does and adapt to it. Not moral "selfishness", just an early stage of psychological development. |
| Operation |
The process of working something out in your head. Young children (in the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages) have to act, and try things out in the real world, to work things out (like count on fingers): older children and adults can do more in their heads. |
| Schema (or scheme) |
The representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together. |
| Stage |
A period in a child's development in which he or she is capable of understanding some things but not others |
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