According to Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, people are born with tendency to organize their thinking processes into psychological structures. Piaget calls these psychological structures schemes. Schemes are our system for understanding and interacting with the world. Schemes are organized system of actions or thought that allow us to mentally represent or think about objects in our world. As schemes become more organized and new schemes develop, human behavior becomes more sophisticated and better suited to the environment.
In addition to organizing their thinking processes people also inherit the tendency to adapt to their environment. Two types of processes can develop when people adapt to their environment. When people try to understand something new by fitting it into what they already know, into their existing schemes, assimilation happens. When people have to change their existing schemes to respond to new information that does not fit existing schemes then they accommodate. They adjust their thinking to fit the new information, instead of adjusting the information to fit their thinking.
So these actual changes in thinking take place through what Piaget calls equilibration. Equilibration is our search for balance between cognitive schemes and the information from the environment.
Lev Vygotsky explains in his social constructivist theory that our cognitive structures and thinking processes are affected by our social interactions with others.
Thinking involves reasoning and problem solving. Vygotsky believed that these higher order mental processes are mediated, accomplished through and with the help of psychological tools such as language, signs and symbols. So different types of language serve as mediators between our minds and the environments.
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