The following are examples of Piaget’s concept of equilibration. Analyze two of the following scenarios and identify in each:

Question

a) The source of disequilibrium
b) The accommodation taking place
c) The resulting new scheme
• Baby Natalie can feed herself applesauce with her fingers with relative ease. Her mother introduces the spoon and encourages Natalie to feed herself. Natalie dips the spoon in the applesauce but turns the spoon on the way to her mouth and the applesauce drips off. After some practice Natalie learns how to keep the applesauce on the spoon.
• Eli sees some groups of numbers on a gravestone (1899-1950). He appears to be thinking about the numbers and his lips are moving and he is speaking under his breath. Then he looks perplexed and says, “But you can’t really call them can you, if they are dead?” Eli’s turns to his mom for clarification.
• Alonzo begins reading his textbook and knows from his high school psychology class that cognitive development begins with the “formal operations” stage. While skimming his text he discovers that children first develop operations in the Concrete Operational stage. He carefully reads the section on cognitive development.

Answer 1

Student should respond to two of the three scenarios and clearly identify: source of disequilibrium, accommodation, and resulting new scheme.
• Natalie: source of disequilibrium: applesauce drips off spoon; accommodation: learns how to keep spoon level so applesauce doesn’t drip; new scheme: self feeding with spoon
• Eli: source of disequilibrium: numbers on gravestone and phone number; accommodation: learns numbers are dates, not phone numbers; new scheme: dates refer to birth and death
• Alonzo: source of disequilibrium: understanding of cognitive development is flawed; accommodation: understanding of children’s development of operations; new scheme: differentiated, more complex, correct conceptualization of cognitive development.