Theorist: Albert Bandura Observational Learning Theory
Introduction
A Theorist
Life, Family, Education, and Work
He was born on December 4, 1945, in Mundare, Alberta, Canada, and the youngest and the only boy among the six siblings with a father (a trans-Canada railroad worker) from Poland and a mother (a town’s general store worker) from Ukraine. Albert Bandura has learned three foreign languages, Russian, Polish, and German with the help of his father. The family had no formal education, but they have shown a high importance and value on educational attainment. The entire family had worked hard together, celebrated a happy life, and created a cheerful family. Bandura has successfully finished his elementary and high school education with great pride despite many challenges. After high school graduation, he followed his parents’ advice to obtain a higher education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and took up Psychology course by chance.
Later, in 1949, he graduated from college with a Bolocan Award in psychology. Then, he decided to pursue a graduate study at the University of Iowa, where the stone tablets of psychology reside. His stay in the Department of Psychology at Iowa made him say that resilience is a handy survival resource towards success. In 1951, Bandura received a Masters degree and in 1952, his Ph.D. degree in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa. Later on, he obtained a postdoctoral internship at the Wichita Guidance Center. In 1952, he found his lifelong partner and married Virginia Varns, an educator in the School of Nursing in Iowa. The couple has two daughters, Mary (born in 1954), a Clinical Psychologist, and Carol (born in 1958) a Director of an adolescent clinic for migrant worker and neglected poor. In 1953, at Stanford University, Bandura became a professor and remained pursuing his career. Professor Albert Bandura continues to research and teach at Stanford University with a dynamic and strong determination and inspires many individuals. As a man of principles, he is inspired and reminded of the saying, “It is not the miles traveled, but the amount of tread remaining that is significant,” and he added, “I still have too much tread left to gear down or to wind up this engaging life.”
Background of Theories
Social Cognitive Theory
The social cognitive theory adopts the agentic view of the human development, adaptation, and change. Bandura suggests that to be an agent is to influence one’ functioning and life circumstances intentionally. It implies that the personal influence is part of the causal formation. Individuals are practically self-organizing, self-regulating, self-reflecting, and proactive. It means that the personal influence is a contributor to a life’s circumstances, not an onlooker of his of her behavior and not just a product of itself.
Social Learning Theory
In social learning Abert Bandura agrees with the behaviorist learning theories of classical and operant conditionings. However, Bandura adjoins two significant ideas; first, mediating processes happen between stimuli and responses and secondly, behavior is acquired from the environment through the observational learning process.
Similarly, Pajares and Urdan affirm that several pathways lead individuals through life anytime; substantially, how the individuals manage their lives and the environment where they belong. Socially, based on the theory, it analyzes the developmental changes in the life events.
Observational Learning Theory
In the 1960s and 1970s, Bandura and colleagues became known for his social psychological research area of observational learning. Today, the early experiments are trademarks in the field of psychology and behavioral science. Bandura states that learning is exceedingly difficult and risky if individuals rely only on the effects of their actions to inform them what to do next. Bandura’s Observational or Social Learning Theory states that individuals can learn by watching others perform the behavior. It implies that the Observational learning explains the nature of individuals, especially children, to learn behaviors by observing the behavior of the people around them, and eventually, children will imitate. The basic premise of the theory is to learn the behavior through observation with the explicit reinforcement; learning through observing the consequences of behaviors of others.
Through modeling, most of the human behavior learned observationally; a person learns new behaviors from others and uses the information as a guide for action. Hart affirms that the social learning theory details about human behavior and the interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and the environmental influences. In addition, Deeming and Johnson present the component processes with the observational learning fundamentals such as attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation.
Theory Concepts
The behavioral or social learning theory covers both the cognitive and behavioral frameworks that encompass the attention, memory, and motivation. Correspondingly, Bandura’s theory improves with the strictly behavioral interpretation of modeling and relates to Vygotsky and Lave’s theories that furthermore highlight the essential role of social learning. In the observational learning, the behavioral acquisition happened by watching the actions and outcomes of the behavior of others that include the credible role models of the behavior observed. Evidently, individuals acquire responses using the mechanism of social behavior, direct experience or observation-modeling. Bandura continued further to advocate other forms of learning that are tied directly to experiences and by observing the behavior of others. Deeming and Johnson support this idea that the observational learning has a powerful effect, and the enhanced effect is the demonstrated behavior of others.
Bandura advocates the form of learning and his theory, condensed the form of learning as critical for survival and development. Specifically, the identified features essential for vicarious learning that occurred under Bandura’s social learning theory are the need for homophily, identification, and parasocial interaction. It entails that there is a need for similarity between the actor and the observer; the observer being able to engage in perspective taking and share in the experience of the actor; and a bond or friendship with the actor. Thus, the continuous exposure with the actor develops stronger similarity, experience, and relationship.
Modeling and Applications
Variations allow Bandura to establish certain steps that involved modeling process. The modeling processes are the attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Learning is paying attention with anything and that is the observational learning. The characteristic of the model influences the attention of the observer. For example, if the model is colorful, dramatic, attractive, or appears competent, then individuals surely pay more attention. In addition, if the model seems similar to one’s self, then he or she pays more attention. Thus, the types of variations directed Bandura to examine the effect of television to the children.
Retention is important in learning. Simply remembering the things an individual obtained from paying attention. Specifically, the language and imagery are necessary in the development of retention. The observer stores everything that he or she observed from the model in the form of verbal or images’ descriptions. The stored information (language or image) can be used or reproduced with its own behavior.
The reproduction is the translation of the language or image descriptions into an actual behavior. It is the ability to reproduce the behavior in the first place, for example, a person watching a basketball game for hours, but do not reproduce the dribbles because he id not on the basketball court. On the other hand, if the person performs dribbling the ball on the court can improve more if he watches basketball player better than him. Another important aspect of reproduction is the ability to imitate that improves through practice and behavior involvement. At times, ability improves even through imagination like performing in the mind’s eye before the actual performance.
Motivation helps significantly in learning. All the obtained attention, retention, and reproduction would be useless without motivation. Motives involve the past (traditional behaviorism), promised (incentives), and vicarious reinforcements (seeing and recalling the reinforced model).. Moreover, Bandura determines the models of observational learning, the Live Model (actual person performing the behavior), Verbal Instruction Model ( telling of details and description of the behavior), and Symbolic Model (real or fictional character demonstrating such as movie, radio, television, and media).
Pedagogical Activity
Albert Bandura created the existing groundbreaking theory of observational learning. The theory suggests the existence of the cognitive processes of attention, retention, reproduction, and motivational reinforcement. More specifically, the theory conceives that a person can observe from a model, learn the behavior, and may exhibit the behavior that depends on the associated circumstances. On the other hand, the organization and rehearsal present the observational learning’s at the highest level of the modeled behavior. Specifically, the modeled behavior in words, images or labels that results in enhanced retention than a simple observation. The individuals are more likely take on a modeled behavior if it results in what they value more. Alternatively, they likely take on a modeled behavior if the model has a similar behavior with the observer and it has a functional value. The educational or instructional applications signify the theory with various factors for the learners and classroom environment.
In particular, the learners learn through observation, as a result, teachers use modeling on topics that improve skills or psychomotors. Regarding the demonstration method, it is used on topics like stunts or dance in physical education, microscopes in science, sewing cloths in EPP, measuring angles in Mathematics, and more. Additionally, modeling is another way to transform behavior aside from the common reinforcement. Similarly, a family is the major context of learning for most individuals and learning within the family is more lasting and influential than other contexts. Thus, family life provides a good foundation and context for all learning acquired at school. It entails that the present scenarios or vicarious experiences of models can present rewards or consequences. The sharing and discussing anecdotes, biographies, and other stories of other individuals, especially the results of their behaviors.
Bobo Doll Study
Bandura’s schematic conception of vicarious learning is the article entitled the “Imitation of Film-Mediated Aggressive Models” with its detailed experiment Bobo Doll study. As a detailed presentation of the experiment, the description of the experiment shown below:
Bandura made a film and the actor was a woman while the audiences were kindergartens. The role of the model (a woman) was to beat up a Bobo doll. A Bobo doll was made of an inflatable material, an egg-shape doll with a weight to bounce back when someone knocked it down. As the young woman hit the Bobo doll, she also shouted bad words, and kicked the doll, and strike it with a little hammer. After the film, the kindergartens or children were sent to the playroom. Inside the playroom where the observers will take notes all the possible actions of the children. The team put a new Bobo doll and few little hammers. The observers recorded everything they had seen. The young children were beating the Bobo doll, and done all the things the young women did in the film. Briefly, the young children precisely mimic the young lady in the film. Thus, the experiment had changed the behavior of the young children, even without reward for approximation. Bandura called the event observational learning or modeling, as his theory known as social learning theory.
However, the experiment received several critiques and feedback. The study falls short in its failure to address some threats to internal validity. These are the selection bias, history, maturation and ambiguous temporal sequence. Specifically, the subjects were selected from the nursery from Stanford University, consequently, their parents, given the time of the study, happened to be at the upper - middle class, White, and highly educated. Apparently, there is a possibility that the experiment or observation will be overlooked or dismissed since the results turn off Bandura’s hypothesis that the film featuring human actors was most instrumental in eliciting and shaping greater aggressive imitation among the subjects. On the contrary, later on, Bandura’s theory evolved to the Social-Cognitive model of aggression. The model of aggression is highly refined cognitive structures served as explanatory devices for the acquisition and generalization of the observed aggression.
Questions for Understanding
Several questions below wil guide the students for more understanding of Bandura’s observational theory:
1. The observational learning is a significant area in the field of psychology and behavior science. Given this, is it necessary that behavior analysts articulate a sound theory of how behavior change occurs through observation?
2. What are the challenges or possibilities that all behavior could be accounted for by the respondent and operant processes alone?
3. In your own opinion, would it be necessary to evaluate the role of observation as a primary determinant of behavior change?
4. Would you agree that behaviorism alone could provide an all-inclusive understanding of learning? Why or why not?
5. If you are to critique the Bobo Doll experiment, what would be your initial reaction? Do you think it was the best thing to do in order to determine the behavior of the young children? Why or why not?
Conclusion
In conclusion, young children learned behavioral patterns and can be developed through tangible experiences or vicarious learning. The study highlighted the massive contribution that Bandura’s early work played a vital role in the present understanding of how an individual learned aggression behaviors. Most of the experts and practitioners in the field of psychology indebted for his extraordinarily innovative career and achievements. The observational learning explained the nature of the individuals, especially the young children. Considering the theory, young children learned their behaviors through an observation of the behavior of the individuals around them and children imitated. Thus, the essential premise of the theory is to learn the behavior through observation with the explicit reinforcement and learning through observing the consequences of behaviors of others.
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