accommodation

Accommodation it is a term that can be used in different ways. Its meaning refers to process and the result of accommodate: place something in such a way that it can adapt or adjust to something else.

Accommodation can refer to the process of placing objects in a given environment. For example: "The arrangement of the furniture took me all afternoon", "We have to think about how we are going to accommodate the new machines".

It is also known as accommodation to what is carried out so that someone or something can adapt to the environment and be established, either temporarily or permanently: "Please take care of the accommodation of the visitors", "The State has the moral obligation to provide accommodation to immigrants who arrive persecuted from their countries".

In the field of psychology, accommodation is called a mechanism that allows an individual to change their cognitive structures to incorporate new knowledge. This process, detailed by Jean piaget, It can imply both the change of an existing scheme and the development of a different scheme that allows the incorporation of the new stimulus.

Jean Piaget was an acclaimed psychologist from Switzerland, who achieved great prominence thanks to his studies on intelligence, cognitive development and childhood. His observations and conclusions are of great importance for the current training of future psychologists, and also for research. With regard to accommodation, which may also appear under the name of adjustment, it is one of the two fundamental learning processes of human beings, together with that of assimilation.

When a child is faced with a new stimulus, it is normal for them to try to add it to their own schemes. Of course, this is not possible in all cases, since sometimes it does not have a scheme suitable for such integration. Through accommodation, the brain can create or modify some of the existing ones to complete the process successfully.

By either of these two ways, creation or modification, there is a change in cognitive structures. It is then that the child can try again to assimilate the stimulus, already with the most favorable schemes. This is, in simpler words, the way of experience that we all go through during our life.

The idea accommodation, on the other hand, appears in the realm of eyesight. Accommodation is called what the lens does when increases your refractive power for focusing on close-range objects. The eye, in relaxation, is ready to focus on what is located at a long distance. Through accommodation, the lens adapts by increasing refractive power.

In the case of vertebrate animals, a group in which humans find ourselves, this increase in power is achieved through two different ways: in some cases the ciliary muscle (which is inside the eye, attached to the lens, and has the appearance of a ring), which increases the curvature and thickness; on the other hand, a movement of the lens can also occur (this is what happens in the eyes of fish).

It should be mentioned that it is not always possible to achieve a perfect accommodation of the image, since there are certain limits, beyond which there is always a loss of sharpness (the picture), so that objects are perceived in a "blurry" way. The shortest distance at which it is possible to see an object with perfect accommodation, without distortion, is known as near point.