O BSERVATIONAL L EARNING S OCIAL L EARNING T HEORY

W OULD YOU TREAT BOBO THIS WAY ? Children were told to play while in another part of the room an adult “model” aggressively “played” with a 5 foot inflated Bobo doll. The model laid the Bobo doll on its side, sat on it and punched it repeatedly in the nose. The model then raised the Bobo doll, picked up a mallet and stuck the doll on the head. Following this the children were brought to a room that contained many attractive toys and... Yes, a Bobo doll! How will the children react to the Bobo doll?

W OULD YOU TREAT BOBO THIS WAY ? The children exhibited a good deal of aggressive behavior toward the Bobo doll- behavior resembling that of the adult model. Basically they beat the crap out of Bobo—OH NO!

M ODELING Albert Bandura

W HAT IS O BSERVATIONAL L EARNING ? Observation or Social Learning- Process of altering behavior by observing and imitating the behavior of others Learning goes beyond stimuli or reinforcement Two Types: Modeling Cognitive

M ODELING Modeling: Learned by imitating others; copying behavior Three Types: General Modeling: behavior will increase if others are doing it Observational Learning: observer watches someone perform and reproduces it closely Disinhibition: engage in threatening activity because the person they are watching are not punished for behavior

M IRROR N EURONS Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so Accidental Experiment Monkey with implanted wires located in the frontal lobe region. Every time monkey placed a peanut into his mouth, a monitored would buzz. One day a researcher returned from lunch with an ice cream cone in hand. The monkey stared. As the researcher raised the cone to lick it, the monkey’s monitored buzzed- the monkey had not moved. You find it hard to smile when you see a frown, you find yourself yawning when you see another person yawn, you laugh when others laugh.

C OGNITIVE L EARNING Cognitive Learning: form of altering behavior that involves mental processes and may result from observation or imitation Concerned with the mental processes of learning Cognitive Maps: a mental picture of spatial relationships or relationships between events Mental picture of a place Tolman placed a rat in a maze & allowed the rat to explore. Next, food was placed at the end of the maze. What route did the rat take in order to get to the food?

C OGNITIVE L EARNING The rat quickly learned to take the shortest route to the food. When the shortest route was blocked, the rat found the second shortest route. The rat had developed a cognitive map of the maze, which was created when the rat explored the maze on it’s own.

C OGNITIVE L EARNING Latent Learning: alteration of behavior that is not demonstrated by an immediate, observable change in behavior Behavior is learned without reinforcers but may not be present until reinforcer is present Rat learned to find the second shortest route through latent learning. It didn’t intend to use this route, but learned it through exploration.

Time for Bobo!

C OGNITIVE L EARNING Learned Helplessness: condition in which repeated attempts to control a situation fail, resulting in the belief that the situation is uncontrollable. Ex. If a person gets rewarded for nothing, they do not learn to work Learned Helplessness is very common in the classroom!!!!!!! *Does your child hate school? *Can't seem to keep up with his class *Fights doing homework *Lacks motivation and self-esteem

In an experiment on learned helplessness, Seligman found that animals that were unable to change their situation for long periods of times seemed unable or unwilling to change when the possibility of change was opened to them. I CAN’T DO THIS!!!

C OGNITIVE L EARNING Learned helplessness is one major cause of depression Three important elements Stability: result of a permanent characteristic (I never have done well on math tests and I never will!!!) Globality: problem is a large scaling issue (I’m dumb!) Internal: Stability + Globality = reasons for failure