evaluation

• Strength - cognitive factors


  POINT: One strength of SLT is it emphasises the importance of cognitive factors

  EVIDENCE: Neither classical nor operant conditioning can offer a fully comprehensive account of human learning on their own because cognitive factors are not taken into account. Humans and animals store information about the behaviour of others and use this to make judgements about when it is appropriate to perform certain actions.

  EVALUATION: This shows that SLT provides a more complete explanation of human learning than the behaviourist approach by recognising the role of meditational processes.
• Counterpoint - biological factors


  POINT: However, the SLT does not take any biology into account.

  EVIDENCE: For example, recent research suggests that observational learning is controlled by mirror neurons in the brain, which allow us to empathise with and imitate other people.

  EVALUATION: This suggests that SLT may make too little reference to the influence of biological factors on social learning.
• Strength - application


  POINT: Another strength of the SLT is that it has real-world application.

  EVIDENCE: Social learning principles can account for how children learn from other people around them, as well as through the media, and this can explain how cultural norms are transmitted. Therefore, SLT has proved useful in understanding a range of behaviours such as how children came to understand their gender role by imitating role models in the media.

  EVALUATION: This increases the value of SLT as it can account for real-world behaviour.
• Limitation - Bandura's evidence


  POINT: One limitation of the SLT is that it relies too heavily on evidence from contrived lab studies.

  EVIDENCE: Many of Bandura's ideas were developed through observation of children's behaviour in lab settings. This raises the problem of demand characteristics as the artificial setting may have encouraged the children to behave as they believe was expected of them therefore reducing the study's internal validity.

  EVALUATION: This suggests that Bandura's research actually tells us little about how children actually learn aggression in everyday life.