Four-year-old Hope thought her next-door neighbor's new pet rabbit was a kitty-cat until she noticed it hopped instead of walked, and it didn't purr at all. The change in Hope's understanding of her neighbor's new pet illustrates Piaget's process of:

The change in Hope's understanding of her neighbor's new pet illustrates Piaget's process of: accommodation.

Explanation:

According to psychologist Jean Piaget, accommodation happens when we change our schema (ideas) after receiving new information, in order to accommodate it. That is what a child does when she creates a new category for an animal that she has never seen before. In Hope's case, she knew what a cat was and had a schema associated to it. However, when she realizes the animal she is looking at is different from a cat - it hops and it doesn't purr -, she must create a new category for it to accommodate it. The new animal represents new information that does not fit the previous schema. Hope must now create the category "rabbit".