social learning theory

• Imitation


  Copying behaviour of others
• Identification

  When an observer associates themselves with a role model and wants to be like the role model.

  live models - e.g teaches, siblings, parents

  symbolic models - people in the media
• Modelling

  From the observer's perspective, its imitating behaviour of the role model. From the role model's perspective, its the precise demonstration of a specific behaviour that may be imitated by the observer.
• Vicarious reinforcement

  Not directly experienced but occurs through observing someone else being reinforced for their behaviour - key factor in imitation.
• Mediational processes

  Cognitive factors that influence learning a behaviour and come between stimulus and response. for modelling to occur there must be attention, retention,motor reproduction, motivation.
• Attention


  noticing certain behaviorus
• Retention

  remembering the behaviour
• Motor reproduction


  whether the behaviour is physically possible to carry out.
• Motivation

  there has to be a reason to want to copy their behaviour
• Watson and Rayner - Little Albert experiment

  -Aim whether humans learn through classical condition and can see if a fear resource can be successfully conditioned in a human child.

  - healthy baby little Albert whose mother was a nurse at the hospital they worked at. Albert was given a white rat which liked

  - then whenever he reached out to stroke it a metal bar was hit to make a loud noise which scared him.

  -This procedure was repeated three times a day each month, eventually whenever Albert say the rat he would cry, this fear was also generalised with white rabbits, a white fur coat, cotton wool and santas beard
• Social learning theory

  -Social learning theory suggests that behaviour is learnt from society/ or individuals.

  - a bridge between the behaviourist and the cognitive approach

  -concerned with human behaviour

  -sees humans as active manipulators their own environment
• there are four factors that affect imitation:

  1) we are more likely to imitate a model we identify with. This is most likely if the model is similar to us e.g same age or gender or if a very powerful and successful

  2) individuals with low self-esteem and more likely to imitate the behaviour of models

  3) if they see models are receiving positive reinforcement for their actions they are most likely to imitate them this is called vicarious reinforcement

  4) The internal mediational processes suggests that the observer will use the behaviour he is seen in the future where is able to do so only if the positive consequence is greater than the expectation of negative consequences
• Bandura et al

  - 3-5 yr old

  - half the kids shown an adult infant of them beat up the Bobo doll aggressively

  - they were then left alone in a room with the doll ordinary toys

  -found that the children acted aggressively toward the doll when they left

  -most aggression can be seen when the adult was the same gender as the child

  - the other half of the kids were shown an adult playing nicely with the doll

  - when they were left alone they saw a lot less violence towards it.

  - they also did the same experiment but showed a video of the adult beating the doll and the same results were shown

  - therefore violent tv shows can influence children
• Evaulation

  strength:

  -highly controlled the adults behaviour was pre recorded which means each child was exposed to the same amount of aggression.

  -ecological validity

  -easily replicated

  -used matched pairs design

  weakness:

  -lack of ecological validity the child and the model had no interaction which they would have done in a normal family life

  -overlooks role of biology

  -might not work with older chi;drew

  - children might have known the outcome of the experiment as all the kids were friends-
• Overall evaluation of the social learning theory

  Strength:

  -it has explained areas which the behavioural theory can't

  -practical application

  -research

  -explains cultural variations in behaviour

  
  

  weaknesses

  - doesn't explain all our behaviour

  -overlooks biological factors

  -overlooks personality -nature/nurture debate

  - lab experiment - limited
• cognitive factors

  P: strength - recognises the importance of cognitive factors

  E: classical conditioning and operant conditioning cant offer adequate information about learning on their own

  E: humans and animals store information about the behavior of others and use this to make decisions about appropriate behavior

  L: therefore SLT theory provides a more comprehensive explanation for behaviour
• counterpoint

  P: limitation - criticized for making too little reference to biological factors

  E: bandura thought learning itself was determined by the environment

  E: however recent research suggests that observational learning may be due to mirror neurons allowing us to emphasize and imitate people

  L: therefore biological influences were under-emphasised by SLT
• contrived lab studies

  P: limitation - evidence for SLT mainly comes from lab studies

  E: lab studies criticized for having demand characteristics

  E: e.g. bodo doll is made to hit so children may have been using the Bodo doll as intended

  L: therefore research tells us little about aggression in children in real life
• real-world application

  P: strength - real-world application

  E: SLT principles such as imitation, modeling, etc tell us a lot about how children learn behaviors from others around them

  E: This helps s to understand a range of behaviors such as gender roles

  L: therefore increased value of the approach