Many of us are familiar with Edgar Rubin’s Vase, or is it vase and faces?  While most of us see both a vase and two faces, some people see only the vase, others only the faces. This depends upon whether we are assimilative learners, use accommodation techniques or a mixture of both. However, “what is assimilated learning?” I hear you cry!

Assimilation and accommodation are the two processes of adaptation which help us to understand external factors and to internalise them to exist within our view of the world. The two processes are inextricably linked whilst working in a different way.

James Atherton uses the analogy of databases when explaining the process. “If you are familiar with databases, you can think of it this way: your mind has its database already built, with its fields and categories already defined. If it comes across new information which fits into those fields, it can assimilate it without any trouble.”

Accommodation is the process of fitting new ideas into a database which will not accept those concepts without adapting and changing them, rather like some expensive bespoke software, it can always theoretically do something, but requires a huge effort to do so. These are two of the four processes of David Kolb’s Cycle of experiential learning. For accommodation to occur, new ways of adapting our pre-existing knowledge have to be constructed in order to help our minds to make sense of it.

These processes are enormously powerful in our innate understanding of the world, but grow more problematic as we age. Children assimilate knowledge readily as they are open to the possibilities of exciting new concepts. Adults, however, having already developed strategies to deal with new information, do not generally process information in an impartial way.  One joker quipped that “this was a hardening of the categories!” This fact is extremely helpful to all of those people working to entertain or influence us.

Advertisements use the fact that there are some things that we are inherently comfortable with and tap into our pre-existing beliefs to influence their target audience. It is not a matter of chance that “Hovis” is always in the top 10 adverts.  This is called biased assimilation, and occurs when our opinions are formed by our wants and needs and those things we believe in.

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it,“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable – must be the truth”.

Performers like Derren Brown, whose extensive knowledge of the human mind, are able to utilise the fact that we wish to believe certain things and readily accept suggestions put to us. His ability to understand the elasticity of the mind at different stages of one’s life assists him enormously in understanding whether someone is or is not open to a new concept. As he pointed out recently “Just because you’re paranoid does not mean someone is not after you”

Conspiracy theories gain wide acceptance because of peoples’ pre-existing beliefs and irrespective of the facts, or do they?

One popular theory which was thought to be controversial in it’s day and still defies belief when first put to us is that of dropping a feather and a canon ball from a great height in the grand tradition of Galileo to prove that all objects fall at the same speed. This was particularly problematic as it did not prove with any degree of accuracy that Galileo was right, but did shatter Aristotle’s hypothesis that a weight of ten times the size would fall ten times as fast!

Thus, we have something which is not easily assimilated, displacing a universally accepted belief. This is called synthesis and occurs when a thesis is directly contrasted with an antithesis. Only two results are possible, that the mind adapts and changes it’s belief to accommodate the new idea or that a compromise is reached.

Hegel suggested that this dialectic was an incredibly complex idea and is reputed to have said from his deathbed “no-one ever understood me; even I didn’t understand me”.

To explain accommodation, optical illusions are extremely helpful. Because we know that it is possible to ascend and descend stairs the concept of Michael Escher’s interpretation of Penroses’ staircase works.
Other things that change our perception are when an object rotates. There is a theory which states that once inverted an image loses it’s ability to show emotion.

New theories are based on assimilation and also utilise accommodation. The most significant of these recently is Mind Mapping. This uses our ability to assimilate information and place it into categories which are simple to remember and tagged in our memories. This technique is frequently used by comedians due to the complex sequential nature of their language. If you have not done so, I urge you to look at the website: www.mind-mapping.co.uk

Speaking from a standpoint of a teacher in school, the most useful way in which we can use assimilated learning is via our language.

Douglas Barnes captures the essence of teaching in his excellent book, “Language, the Learner and the School” when he says “the crucial quality of a teacher’s language is whether it is warm, exploratory, available, encouraging the child to involve himself actively in the learning, or whether it is cold, inflexible, defensive and discouraging.”

Kolb’s Learning Theory states that, Assimilating (watching and thinking) - The Assimilating learning preference is for a concise, logical approach. Ideas and concepts are more important than people. These people require good clear explanation rather than practical opportunity. They excel at understanding wide-ranging information and organising it in a clear logical format. People with an Assimilating learning style are less focused on people and more interested in ideas and abstract concepts. People with this style are more attracted to logically sound theories than approaches based on practical value. People with this learning style are important for their effectiveness in information and science careers. In formal learning situations, people with this style prefer readings, lectures, exploring analytical models, and having time to think things through. They are the 7% of auditory learners.

This article was provided by Mrs. Anne Goodsall, BH(Hons), PGCE
Anne is the Principal of The Literacy Lounge and can be found at www.literacylounge.co.uk