Social learning theory

• Proposed by Albert Bandura, argued against behaviourism. Stated that classical and operant conditioning could not account for all human learning and that there are more important learning processes that lie between the stimulus and response.
• Role models. Live- people present in the environment your in e.g. parents siblings or teachers. Symbolic- people present in the media e..g celebrities.
• Imitation-whole patterns of behaviour can be rapidly acquired. Kids imitate the behaviours and attitudes modelled by their parents.
• Identification-there needs to be something about the role model that the person imitating the behaviour identifies with.
• Vicarious reinforcement- when you learn the consequences of behaviour from others you adjust your behaviour accordingly.
• Mediational processes. What happens in order for imitation to occur. ARMM. attention, retention, motor reproduction and motivation.
• SLT is more concerned by human behaviour than animals.
• Learning occurs by observation and imitation of role models and can occur indirectly.
• Nature-non learning approach. Nurture- learning approach.
• Bobo doll experiment 1961-Albert Bandura. Aim a controlled experiment to investigate if social behaviours (aggression)can be acquired by observation and imitation.
• Procedure-36boys and 36 girls age 3-6 from Standford university nursery. Each participants aggression was observed(event sampling) in the nursery before the experiment, they were then put into groups based on similar aggression levels-matched pairs design.
• To test inter reliability 51 students were observed by 2 different researchers ratings were compared high reliability correlation r=0.89
• Lab experiment. IV manipulated in 3 conditions, aggressive model shown to 24 kids, non aggressive model shown to 24 kids, no model shown to 24 kids(control group/condition). Aggression was shown by the models attacking the BOBO doll in a distinctive manner e.g. use of hammer, throwing the doll in the air and shouting "pow boom". Non aggression was displayed in a quiet and subdued manner e.g. playing with a tinker toy set and ignoring the doll.
• Room 1. Child taken in individually, experimenter told them these were the best toys and that they could not use the toys as they had been reserved for the other children-to measure mild aggression arousal.
• Room 2 contained aggressive toys such as a mallet, peg board, dart guns and 3 foot BOBO doll and non aggressive toys such as a tea set, plastic farm animals and crayons. Each child was left in the room for 20 minutes and observed through a 1 way mirror, time sampled at 5 second intervals.
• Findings- children in the aggression role model group were the most imitative. The girls in the aggressive role model group imitated physical aggression if model was male and verbal if female model. The boys were most likely to imitate same sex model.
• BOBO doll expt-Advantages, easy to establish cause and effect, replicable, standardised instructions. Disadvantages, low ecological validity, novelty(newness) of the doll makes imitation more likely.
• SLT-advantages, scientific lab experiment, interrater reliability. Disadvantages, no ecological validity, demand characteristics, hard to generalise as findings done on children not representative, more subjective, ignores the nature side of nature vs nurture debate.