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Albert Bandura & Social Cognitive Theory

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Albert Bandura & Social Cognitive Theory
Denise A. Vega
Liberty University
PSYC 341
July 1, 2012
Professor Timothy Bouman

Abstract

The contributions Albert Bandura made to the understanding of social learning have led to further investigation and new findings. Social Cognitive Theory is Bandura’s greatest contribution to social, cognitive, and abnormal psychology. It has led to a greater understanding of human behavior and how humans learn behavior in a social context. Ultimately, modern research found that while Albert Bandura and other social learning theorists uncovered many aspects of learning and perception, there are factors that need further scrutiny, (Martin, Ruble, and Szkrybalo, 2001). The ability to produce more …show more content…

The purpose of the study was to examine whether children learn behaviors form models in their lives in addition from learning discrimination. Half of the subjects had playtime with a nurturing model while the other half had playtime with a non-nurturing model. This is how the independent variable was manipulated. The dependent variable in this study was whether or not the subjects displayed the behavior observed in the model and to what extent this behavior was displayed. The subjects were 24 female and 24 male nursery school children ranging from 45 – 61 months of age. In the non-nurturing scenario, the model brought in one subject at a time and instructed the child to play with toys on the floor. While the subject played, the model sat a desk going through paperwork and did not interact with the child in the least. In the nurturing scenario, the model sat on the floor playing with the child and responded to any need for help in a warm fashion. For the course of 5 days the subject were put into groups of 15 randomly assigned participants and had playtime together. The extent to which the participants replicated the model’s behavior was then measured. The data reflected no significant sex differences among subjects. 95% of participants adopted aggressive behavior, 45% replicated model’s dancing, and 28% replicated verbalizations. The data

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