Bandura's social learning theory

One of the most influential theories of learning is Theory of social learning formulated by Albert Bandura. It covers several concepts of traditional learning theory and cOperating Operating BF Skinner.

Content

• The theory of social learning, basic concepts
• Learning through observation
• Mediation processes
  • There are four mediation processes proposed by Bandura:
• Final assessments

The theory of social learning, basic concepts

The theory is based on the fact that there are types of learning where direct reinforcement is not the main teaching mechanism, but that the social element can lead to the development of a new learning among individuals. Theory of social learning is useful for Explain how people can learn new things and develop new behaviors by observing other individuals. Thus, this theory deals with the learning process by observation among people.

In Albert Bandura's social learning theory, 1977 is based on behavioral learning theories about classical conditioning and operating conditioning. However, add two important ideas:

1. Mediation processes occur between stimuli and responses.
2. Behavior is learned from the environment through the observation learning process.

Learning through observation

Children observe people around them to see and imitate how they behave. Observed individuals are called Models. In society, children are surrounded by many influential models, such as parents and other family members, television characters (or YouTube), friends, school teachers, etc.

Children pay attention to all these people or models and They encode their behavior. Subsequently, they can imitate (that is, copy) the behavior they have observed. But they can do this regardless of whether the behavior is "appropriate" or not, although there are a number of processes that make it more likely that a child reproduces the behavior that his society considers appropriate for him or her.

First, the child is more likely to imitate those people who perceive as more similar. Consequently, same -sex behavior is more likely to imitate.

Subsequently, people surrounding the child will respond to behavior imitates, either with reinforcement or punishment. If a child mimics the behavior of a model and the consequences are rewarding, the child is likely to continue performing such behavior. For example, if a father sees his daughter comforting her teddy bear and says "you are a very kind girl", this will be rewarding for her and will make it more likely to repeat the behavior. Your behavior will have been reinforced.

Strengthening a behavior can be external or internal and can be positive or negative. If a child seeks the approval of his parents or colleagues, this approval will be an external reinforcement, feeling happy to have been approved is an internal reinforcement. A child will behave in a way that he thinks he will gain greater approval, since he wants it innate.

In general, The positive (or negative) reinforcement will have little impact if the reinforcement offered externally does not match the needs of the individual.  Reinforcement can be positive or negative, but the important thing is that it leads to a change in the behavior of a person.

On the other hand, the child will also take into account what happens to another person before deciding whether or not to copy his actions. A person learns by observing the consequences of another, For example, a younger brother can observe a type of behavior of his older brother who is awarded, so it will be more likely to repeat that particular behavior. This is known as Vicar reinforcement.

The identification It occurs again through a model, and consists of copying or adopting behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes observed in the person with whom one is identifying.

Identification is different from imitation since it implies a whole series of attitudes and behaviors, while imitation usually implies the copy of a single behavior.

Mediation processes

Bandura believed that human beings are active information processors, which value the relationship between their behavior and their consequences. Therefore, observation learning cannot occur unless cognitive processes are involved. These mental factors mediate in the learning process to determine whether a new response is acquired or not.

Thus, people do not automatically observe the behavior of a model and imitate it. There is a thought process before imitation and is called mediation process. This occurs between behavior observation (stimulus) and imitation or not (response).

There are four mediation processes proposed by Bandura:

1. Attention: It is the measure to which we observe the behavior of others. To imitate behavior, he first has to capture our attention. We observe many behaviors throughout the day, but many of them are not interested. Therefore, attention is extremely important for behavior to have sufficient influence on us to want to imitate it.

2. Retention: The retention of freshly learned behavior is necessary for it to be maintained. Without withhold.

3. Reproduction: This is the ability to perform the behavior that the model has just shown. We would like to be able to imitate certain behaviors daily, but this is not always possible. We are limited by our physical and even mental capacity, and for those reasons or any other, even wanting to reproduce a behavior, sometimes we cannot. This influences our decisions to try to imitate or not. In this phase, the practice of behavior repeatedly is important for the improvement of our capacities.

4. Motivation: It is about the will to carry out a behavior. The rewards and punishments that follow a behavior will be valued by the observer before imitating it. If the perceived rewards exceed the perceived costs (if any), then the behavior will be more likely to be imitated by the observer. On the contrary, if the Vicar reinforcement It is not important enough for the observer, so it will not imitate the behavior.

Final assessments

The social learning approach takes into account Thought processes and recognizes the role he plays in the decision to imitate or not a certain behavior. However, although this theory can explain some fairly complex behaviors, it cannot properly explain how we develop a whole range of behaviors including thoughts and feelings. We have a lot of cognitive control over our behavior, and just because we have had negative experiences does not mean that we have to reproduce this behavior.

It is for this reason that Bandura modified his theory in 1986 and called his social learning theory, Cognitive Social Theory (TSC), as a better description about the way in which We learn from our social experiences.

Some of the criticisms of social learning theory are because it is limited to describing behavior only based on nature or experiences, and underestimates the complexity of human behavior. It is more likely that a person's behavior is due to an interaction between nature (biology) and experience (environment).

The Bandura social learning theory It is not a complete explanation of all behaviors. For example, the discovery of Espejo neurons has emphasized the importance of the biological component in learning, something that does not raise this theory. Although research is still in its beginnings, the recent discovery of this type of neurons and its study in primates can be an interesting neurological base to understand imitation. Basically these are neurons that are activated whether the animal does something for itself as if it observes a behavior in another.