Social learning theory, believes that the social environment is the way we acquire behaviour. Behaviours is both acquired and maintained by the principles of operant conditioning. Social learning theory suggests that while in a social environment this is where the cognitive process that takes place and can occur through observation or direct instruction. In addition, with this, learning also occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious reinforcement, this is where a reinforcement is received indirectly by observing another person who is being reinforced, this was developed by B. F. Skinner, who called the use of reinforcement to strengthen behaviour operant conditioning. Traditional behaviour theories …show more content…
Many studies have found that other aspects contribute to the link between being sexually abused and exhibiting sexually abusive behaviours in adolescence. These include victimization, which is the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. It is believed that the younger the child is, the more violent and intrusive the sexual acts will be, and if the number of perpetrators increases, it is then more likely that the sexually irregular behaviour will develop in the victims. All of this suggests that the experience of sexual abuse during childhood has an impact on the development of sexually abusive behaviour patterns, but exactly how the abuse is modelled and manifested is still somewhat …show more content…
The cognitive process allows observational learning within children, and with this children learn through observing the people around them. This was illustrated in Bandura’s (1961) ‘Bobo Doll’ experiment, Bandura experimented through children’s behaviour after witnessing a adult model act violently towards the Bobo doll. The most notable experiment measured the children’s behaviour after seeing the model either get rewarded, receive a punishment, or experience no consequence for their actions of beating up the Bobo doll. These experiments were first hand approaches to test Bandura’s social learning theory. The social learning theory suggests that people don’t only learn by observing, imitating, and modelling, the behaviour they perceive, it also suggests that people also learn through being rewarded or punished, this being known as ‘behaviourism’, but they also can learn from watching somebody else being rewarded or punished for the behaviour exhibited, this being known as ‘observational learning’. The results of the Bobo doll experiment found that the children exposed to the aggressive models were more likely to act in a physically aggressive way, compared to those who were not exposed to the aggressive model. The results also concern gender differences, which strongly supported Bandura’s prediction that children are
It has been suggested that children who are victims of sexual abuse also become abusers themselves. Children of abuse have a higher probability of becoming a future abuser. Child abuse is characterized as any act that jeopardizes or impairs a child’s physical or emotional health and growth. These acts include any harm done to a child who cannot be rationally explained and is often characterized by an injury or series of injuries seeming to be non-accidental in nature. The behaviors of child abuse can happen in both boys and girls leaving them with severe lifetime symptoms. Treatment is often necessary for them to overcome the actions done to them, but it is not always successful in curing the mutilation. However, the existence of one sign of child maltreatment does not mean child abuse is occurring within a home. Even with proper education, therapy, and validation one has the probability to become an abuser himself/herself.
There are different types of cognitive learning, in which each person has made their contributions to the human learning theories. Each theorist has made some great points to find the human understanding and how it shapes a person in learning and the cognition. Albert Bandura was one of those theorist in which he believed that our behavior is learning by observing others. One of Bandura’s theory was the Bobo doll study (Bandura, 1977).
Child abuse is a serious issue in today's society. Many people have been victims of child abuse. There are three forms of child abuse: physical, emotional, and sexual. Many researchers believe that sexual abuse is the most detremental of the three. A middle-aged adult who is feeling depressed will probably not relate it back to his childhood, but maybe he should. The short-term effects of childhood sexual abuse have been proven valid, but now the question is, do the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse affect middle-aged adults? Many contradicting views arise from the subject of childhood sexual abuse. Researchers and psychologists argue on this issue. Childhood sexual abuse has the potential to damage a child physically, emotionally, and behaviorally for the rest of his or her childhood, and the effects have been connected to lasting into middle-aged adulthood.
Adolescents who are physically abused are likely to question the intentions or others as well as develop bias perceptions of social processes. A study showed that "Inmates who were child victims were more than twice as likely as inmates who were adult victims to report having suffered prior instances of physical or sexual abuse. The differences were particularly striking with respect to sexual abuse. While an estimated 22% of child victimizers reported having been sexually abused, less than 6% of adult victimizers reported such backgrounds” (Ards et al, 2001). Not only are victims of sexual abuse more likely to enact sexual violence against others they are also likely to engage in prostitution.
Many theories have been thought of over the years to attempt to explain why people behave the way they do. Many questions were brought up when thinking about that and the social learning theory is a popular theory in explaining this. Nobody really thought of the social learning theory too much until Albert Bandura wrote his idea of it. He actually wrote a book called “Social Learning Theory.” In this book, he states that behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning(Saul McLeod).
To explain this concept, social cognitive and social learning theories are needed. According to these theories, people learn not only from their own actions, but also from the environment. For example, the child tends to follow and show analogous behavior with their parents. Likewise, media can provide information when we organize our perceptions of reality. Albert Bandura, who is a pioneer of the theory, he published Bobo dolls study in 1963 to determine if watching aggressive action on film caused the children to imitate the behavior displayed by the film characters in real-life situations (Albert, Dorothea, and Shella A. 1963). He made the child watch how the adult treat the Bobo doll. The adult showed aggressive behavior and used verbally aggressive phrases. They punched, kicked, sit on it, and threw down on the floor. After showing these behaviors, they left the laboratory. The result was that the children, who left in the laboratory alone, showed exactly same aggressive behaviors with the adult. The experiment means that the child observe what other do, save it in memory and imitate the behavior that what they watched. In other words, media can be one of a model that the children follow as if they act like the adult after watching their aggressive
My choice of research was in the play behaviors of children as well as aggression. Breaking the topic down more, behavior relates to the psychology and the psyche of each individual. The definition of psychology is “science of mind and behavior” (Clavijo, 2013). After reading the article by Clavijo, I have realized that psychology can be defined in three ways such as the study of the mind, the study of behavior, and the study of the mind and behavior. In the text “The Developing Person” by Berger, behavior is learned through social learning. Children learn different behaviors through the observation of others, others being children and adults. Different people have affects on a child’s life that can affect their behavior. A child’s behavior is heavily influenced by their parents. A son may speak aggressively and without respect towards his mother because this is the way that his father speaks to her therefore he feels that is how to communicate with his mother (Berger, 200, 2012). Moving into play behaviors, children learn from other children in how to play. Most believe cognitive growth relies on child’s play time. Vygotsky and Piaget both believe that when children play it is beneficial, but according to Vygotsky, playing enables a child to think outside the box and create their own meaning from objects, using their imagination. Piaget believes that child benefit from playing together because children and sharing their knowledge and making it more concrete ideas and thoughts. There are four stages of plays, with the fourth stage being the highest most complicated play which consists of rules and guidelines for the game. The lowest level or play would be functional play being infants shaking rattles, clapping their hands, or blow...
The participants in this study included a total of 36 boys and 36 girls ranging in age from 3 years to almost 6 years. The average age of the children was 4 years, and 4 months. The control group consisted of 24 children, who would not be exposed to any model. The rest of the 48 children were divided into two groups: one group was exposed to aggressive models and the other group was exposed to nonaggressive models. These groups were then divided again into males and females. They were then further divided so that half of the children were exposed to same-sex models and opposite-sex models. (Leaving 8 experimental groups and 1 control group.)
Bandura discusses the importance of observational learning. Bandura focuses mostly on how kids develop their habits based of their role models. Bandura shows this in the Bobo Doll Experiment. The Bobo Doll experiment consisted of 36 boys and 36 girls. They were then separated again into watching a video of a plastic doll called Bobo. Some children were separated by some adults aggressively beating up Bobo and the other half were calm adults. After they were showed the video, the kids were then shown to Bobo and the results matched the Social Learning Theory to the max. The kids that were show the aggressive videos were aggressive towards Bobo. Another Social Learning Theory can be told in my shoes because I have done something similar. I remember in fifth grade my older cousin would always ride his bike down the biggest hill without a helmet. I figured if he did and was okay, why can’t I? I learned the hard way and sliced my arm on a rock. Luckily I did not need stitches however, I did go to the doctors and got ointment for it. I still have the scar today. I feel like the Social Learning Theory has made an impact on my life because I have had the opportunity of having a role model. This role model has made a positive change to my life. Similar to Bobo, I have seen what negative role models have done for a person and how much it affects
Social Learning Theory- is learned by observing others in social situations, especially the family and the media, and by perceiving the benefits or rewards to the behavior (Isaacs, 2000).
Akers and Sellers (2013) has stated that social learning theory is an expanded theory of differential association processes and improves it with differential reinforcement and other principles of the behavior theory. They added classical conditioning (the sharpening of involuntary reflex behavior); discriminative stimuli (internal stimuli that lead to signals for behavior); schedules of reinforcement (rewards and punishment ratio following behavioral feedback); and other theories of behavior (Akers & Sellers, 2013).
A Bobo doll was introduced into a room where the kids were playing and the Bobo doll was subjected to three different kinds of behavior that the children were made to witness. In the aggressive model, the adult role model attacked the Bobo doll. Sometimes they used hammers and sometimes they “threw the doll up in the air and shouted “Pow, Boom”” (McLeod, 2011.) In the non-aggressive model, the adult role model ignored the Bobo doll and played in a restrained manner. In the control group, the children played by themselves and were left to do whatever they wanted. Out of the 24 kids who were shown the aggressive model, 6 boys and 6 girls were shown a female model performing the aggressive action and 6 boys and 6 girls were shown a male model doing the same act. Of the 24 that saw the non-aggressive role model, again 6 boys and 6 girls were exposed to a female model and 6 boys and 6 girls were exposed to a male model. The 24 children of the control group were exposed to neither female nor male models. It is important to note that all the children were induced to a “mild aggression arousal” (McLeod, 2011.) The children were allowed to play with a couple of toys and as soon as they made a selection, it was taken away from them and were told that those toys were meant for the other
B. F. Skinner, the most well-known American Psychologist who was the top exponent of the school of psychology that was known as behaviorism, preserved the impression that learning is an end result of change in evident behavior. The changes in behavior are determined by the way individuals reply to stimuli (events) in the environment. B.F. Skinner defined this phenomenon as operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement which is given after the desired response (McLeod, 2007). This
Behavior and social learning are two theories that are inherently intertwined. Behavior to some extent is taught for social reasons, and social learning can very much shape and create behaviors. While behavior is something intentionally taught, social learning can teach and reinforce many unintentional behaviors, such as dishonesty or aggression. In order to adequately discuss these two interrelated topics, theory exploration is in order.
The two researchers that really shaped this belief are Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. Ivan Pavlov researched the digestive systems of dogs to discover the classical conditioning process, which demonstrated that this learning process could be used to make an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus. The two elements are then known as the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response. B.F. Skinner came up with the concept of operant conditioning, which showed the effect of punishments and reinforcements on behavior. Through operant conditioning, a connection is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior. The basic principles of behaviorism are widely used today, in many situations ranging from parenting to education.