Observational Learning

Bandura's research on additional factors for the likelihood to be imitated

-people who are in an authoritative position in our lives -people who we admire or who are of a higher social status -people who perceive as warm and nurturing -people who received rewards for their behaviors -when we lack confidence in our own knowledge or abilities

Mirror neurons and autism

-the absence of a healthy mirror neuron system has been linked to the spectrum of neural disorders -reduced mirror neuron activity weakens their ability to instantly and effortlessly experience what others are experiencing

Bandura's 4 requirements for effective modeling to occur

Focus- pay attention to what the model is doing Retention-you must remember what you observed Reproduction-you must be able to perform the behavior you observed and committed to memory Motivation-you want to copy the behavior

vicarious punishment

children who saw film clips in which the adult was punished for this aggressive behavior, were less motivated to repeat the behaviors later on.

cognitive map

a mental representation that allows an organism to acquire, store, and recall information in a real or spatial environment

Vicarious reinforcement

children who saw the adult's behavior reinforced, were more motivated to imitate the adult's violent actions -children were also more motivated to imitate adult behavior when the adult received no consequences

prosocial behavior

positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior -used to encourage socially acceptable behavior

latent learning

learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it -learning can take place in organism without the presence of a reinforcer

intrinsic motivation

motivated to perform an activity for its own sake and personal rewards

extrinsic motivation

motivated to perform an activity to earn a reward or avoid punishment

Mirror Neurons and Empathy

much of culture is founded upon the concept of togetherness, built over generations on the principles of shared learning and the behaviors and resources acquired from social interaction -biological basis for empathy-mirror neurons fire when we experience an emotion and also when we observe others experiencing an emotion -we are wired to connect

Antisocial behavior

negative, destructive, unhelpful behavior

cognition in conditioning

researchers now believe that conditioning does involve some information processing -in the case of classical conditioning, the cognitive process involved is association, or having two things linked in the mind -the cognitive process involved in operant conditioning is rule learning. A person links a reward or punishment with a behavior, and this association becomes a rule in the person's head.

Observational Learning (social learning)

the process of learning without direct experience but through watching others and imitating others -in observational learning, the person whose behavior the subject watches and imitates is called the model -we learn our native languages and other specific behaviors by observing and imitating others through modeling

Mirror neurons

these cells are found in the frontal lobe and fire both when an organism itself is doing a behavior and also when observing another organism doing the behavior -they enable us to imitate behavior -they are close to the part of the brain that process language -they also help to create appropriate responses to other people's behaviors