obliterative assimilation

obliterative assimilation (uncountable)

1. The assimilation of new knowledge that causes changes to one's existing mental framework for organizing that knowledge.
   • 1970, Robert Stone Newsom, The Assimilation and Retention of Hierarchically Structured Prose Materials, page 15:

     The forgetting of knowledge or obliterative assimilation may be viewed as the gradual and spontaneous dissolution of new ideas from their anchoring ideas.

   • 2011, Norbert M. Seel, Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, page 387:

     This so-called obliterative assimilation contains two kinds of subsumption: a derivative subsumption (i.e., a deductive way of deriving subordinated concepts from superordinate concepts) and a correlative subsumption, which includes learning of new concepts.

   • 2020, Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Familial Feeling, page 274:

     We cannot continue simply to assume a humanistic paternalistic empathy with the suffering of "Others" that Hartman characterises as the "obliterative assimilation of empathy" which quickly becomes self-indulgent.