Sally has a dog at home so she knows about dogs. She is walking down the street and sees an animal walking toward her. The animal has four legs, fur, a tail, and is barking. Sally knows that these are characteristics of a dog given her knowledge of dogs. She quickly concludes that this animal is a dog. This example illustrated the Piagetian concept of _____.

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In this scenario, Sally uses her existing knowledge about dogs to interpret a new animal she encounters. 
Option 1: assimilation. This is when new information is incorporated into an already existing schema without changing the schema. Sally has a 'dog' schema from her experience with her dog at home, and she recognizes the animal as a dog because it matches the characteristics in that schema (four legs, fur, tail, barking). This illustrates assimilation because no modification to her dog schema is needed.
Option 2: accommodation. Accommodation would occur if the new animal didn’t fit Sally’s dog schema and she had to modify her understanding of what a dog is or create a new category for this animal. Since the animal aligns with her dog schema, there’s no evidence of modifying her existing concept here, so this option is incorrect for this example.
Option 3: equilibrium. Equilibrium refers to the overall balance between assimilation and accommodation in a person’s cognitive framework. While the idea of achieving equilibrium is related to Piagetian theory, it is not the specific process being demonstrated in this instance, which is the straightforward use of an existing schema. Therefore, this option doesn’t capture the described mechanism.
Option 4: operations. In Piagetian theory, operations are mental actions associated with the concrete operational stage and involve logical thinking about operations. This scenario centers on recognizing a familiar category, not performing a specific operation, so this option mislabels the process involved.

Intro to Child Psychology Midterm (1-7) Child PSYC 15 - Due 10/24

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