5.1: Social Learning Theories

Behavioral Theories

Behavioral theories suggested that children learn their behaviors through conditioning and cognitive theories. Behavioral theories included:

• Pavlov's Dogs: Remember the experiment in which Pavlov rang a bell before feeding dogs and then whenever a bell would ring they would salivate? His study demonstrates a behavioral theory by creating a reactionary behavior in dogs through classical conditioning. The first part of classical conditioning is creating a response that is established and strengthened by the desired behavior, otherwise known as acquisition. As the association between the response disappears and the behavior weakens or disappears, extinction occurs. The longer an association has existed, the longer it may take to become extinct.
• B.F. Skinner: Skinner worked on operant conditioning, where he used reinforcement and punishment in order to establish learning. Skinner used pigeons in order to demonstrate reinforcement of behavior, as pigeons pushed a button in order to get food. He did this through offering continuous reinforcement, where he offered a reward for every time they pushed the button, as well as through partial reinforcement, where he offered a reward after a number of times they pushed a button or after a period of time had elapsed. His work on operant conditioning demonstrated that when you form an association with a behavior, you learn the consequences and then make decisions on what to do based on your history of punishment or reinforcement.

Social Learning Theory

Unlike behavioral theories, which suggest that all learning is due to conditioning, Psychologist Albert Bandura (1925 2021) proposed that learning occurs through social interactions. Bandura's social learning theory was built on children learning based on their observations of others or through their consumption of media. Like operant conditioning, rewarded actions are more likely to be imitated, while actions that are punished are more likely to be avoided. However, in this theory, Bandura referred to these as association and reinforcement. He believed that learning these occurred through observation, imitation, and modeling by others, however, he also viewed these as being influenced by attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation. These influences are the four mediational processes that Bandura proposed and are crucial for determining if children are going to imitate others (Bandura, 1972).

Attention	In order to know if children will imitate a behavior, the behavior or the person first engaging in the behavior have to grab children's attention (Bandura, 1972).
Retention	In order to imitate a behavior, children must first remember the behavior (Bandura, 1972). While some imitation may be immediate, imitation still needs a memory of what occurred.
Motor Reproduction	The physical ability to reproduce what we have seen sometimes is limited by what we are able to do (Bandura, 1972). If a child sees a behavior, however is unable to physically imitate it, they may internally imitate it, but it may not be observable to others.
Motivation	This is where association and reinforcement come into play (Bandura, 1972). While a child may have paid attention, remembered what happened, and able to reproduce what they saw, children may be motivated to do so by the previous reinforcement they have received, or may be discouraged by previously negative associations they have.

1961: Bobo Doll Experiment

One of Bandura's experiments was the Bobo Doll study, in which he demonstrated that children learn through watching adults and their behavior. In this experiment, children watched a film where an adult was beating up a Bobo doll. After, children were allowed to play in a room where the Bobo doll was kept. Children who had seen the video were more likely to beat up the doll by imitating the adult that they had seen in the video. The study demonstrated that, while children had no reinforcement or encouragement to beat up the doll, children would imitate what they had seen others doing through what Bandura called observational learning.

References:

Bandura, A. (1972). Modeling theory: Some traditions, trends, and disputes. In R. D. Parke (Ed.), Recent trends in social learning theory (pp. 35-61). New York: Academic Press.