Hi everyone! This video is about Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Now, according to Piaget, we organize our thoughts based on something called a schema, or a set of schemes. I like to think about this as a bucket. You can also think about it as a category. So as we encounter new information we try to take that new information and incorporate it into our existing schema, or set of schemes. This is a process called assimilation. Now sometimes, the new information doesn't quite fit into an existing schema and so then what we need to do is create a new schema, through a process of something called accommodation. Now, let's say, for example you encounter or you grow up in a household full of these. This is supposed to be a dog, in case you can't tell. You're going to have a schema for, dog, four legged, furry animal with a tail. Now let's say you encounter some new information, or another type of four legged, furry animal with a tail, for example, this. This is supposed to be a cat. What are you going to do? Well, you might try to use assimilation to put this new information, a cat, into an existing schema of a dog. So it might look something like this: You see the cat and you point at it, and you say, "That's a dog!" And your responsible adult says, "Oh honey, no, that's not a dog, that's a cat." In all actuality what's happening is as a child, you are trying to take the new information and put it in an existing schema, that's assimilation, and your adult is trying to help you with accommodation, or creating a new category for cat, that is separate from dog. So today we talked about schema, assimilation, accommodation, also cats and dogs. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!