acquisition using STL by imitation of another person’s phobia & maintenance through observing acquisition and maintenance of phobia. a model will be paid attention to, as they may be familiar to the person, they repeatedly see phobic response, so they retain it in their memory, the person feels they can replicate fear response so they replicate phobia and may feel motivated to imitate phobia due to vicarious or direct reinforcement.it is vicariously reinforced if model received attention when phobia is shown,could be directly reinforced if they are given attention if they show signs of phobia