A preschooler who knows the word 'bird' calls a butterfly a bird too. Piaget would call this:

1. The child already has a schema for *bird*. 2. The butterfly is new, and the child interprets it with the schema the child already has. 3. Interpreting something new through an existing schema is **assimilation**. 4. Only when the child later narrows the bird idea (to exclude butterflies) does accommodation happen. **Why not the others:** Accommodation would mean the bird schema itself changed, which has not happened yet. _Source: Seifert and Sutton, Educational Psychology, 2nd ed. (2009, CC BY 3.0), Ch 2, section "Psychological constructivism: the independent investigator", p. 34_