Physiological Adaptations are internal systematic responses to
external stimuli in order to help an organism maintain homeostasis.
Behavioral Adaptations are activities that an organism does to help
it survive in its natural habitat. These behaviors can be learned
or instinctive.
Sometimes it is hard to see the physiological adaptations that
an organism has. Organisms that make venom or poison are good
examples of physiological adaptations. Or animals and plants in the
desert that have special tissues to hold or absorb water are also
good examples.
A psychological adaptation is a functional component of the
nervous system that solves a particular reproductive problem.
Information processing is the highly abstract domain upon which
psychological adaptations are thought to operate. That is, the
reproductive problems solved by the nervous system are thought to
be best characterized as information processing
problems.
According to Jean Piaget's theory, adaptation was one of the
important processes guiding cognitive development. The adaptation
process itself can occur in two ways: through assimilation and
accommodation.
In assimilation, people take in information from the outside
world and convert it to fit in with their existing ideas and
concepts. People possess mental categories for information, known
as schemas, that are used to understand the world around them.When
encountering new information, it can sometimes be readily
assimilated into an existing schema.
One classic example: imagine a very small child is seeing a dog
for the first time. The child already knows what a cat is, so when
she sees the dog she immediately assumes it is a cat. After all, it
fits into her existing schema for cats, since they are both small,
furry, and have four legs.
In accommodation, people also accommodate new information by
changing their mental representations to fit the new information.
When people encounter information that is completely new or that
challenges their existing ideas, they often have to form a new
schema to accommodate the information or alter their existing
mental categories.
For the child in the previous example that initially thought
that a dog was a cat, she might begin to notice key differences
between the two animals. One barks while the other meows. One likes
to play while the other wants to sleep all day. After a while, she
will accommodate the new information by creating a new schema for
dogs while at the same time altering her existing schema for
cats.
In conclusion,The adaptation process is a critical part of
cognitive development. Through the adaptive processes of
assimilation and accommodation, people are able to take in new
information, form new ideas or change existing ones, and adopt new
behaviors that make them better prepared to deal with the world
around them.