Bandura & Social Learning Theory

Bandura’s social learning theory is sometimes seen as a bridge between cognitive and behavioral theories because he believed that people learn by observing others, which involves cognition (memory, attitude, beliefs) and behavior (actions taken, rewards).  He posited that children learn by observing the actions of others, such as parents, siblings & other peers.  This observation leads to the acquisition of new skills & information.  Intrinsic reinforcements such as a sense of pride, accomplishment & satisfaction also lead to learning.

Bandura developed this theory in part by conducting what was called the Bobo doll experiment.  Here, a video is work a thousand words: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4586465813762682933.  Basically, Bandura found that kids who watched a video of an adult aggressing upon an inflatable doll would in turn aggress upon a similar doll.  Bandura’s research primarily concentrated on the impact of TV violence on children’s behaviors.

Bandura thought that four processes were necessary for the child or other observer to learn a behavior via social modeling.

• Attention: Obviously you have to be paying attention to what the other people are doing to learn anything from it.  If I’m ignoring the people on the dance floor, I’m not going to learn to dance just by standing close by.
• Retention: You have to remember the stimuli to imitate later.
• Reproduction: This is when you reproduce the image of what you observed.  You have to have the physical capability to do so.
• Motivation: There has to be some reason that you want to recreate what you observed.  Some reasons might be positive reinforcement (a reward, a promise of a reward) or a negative reinforcement (punishment of some kind).

The main critique of Bandura’s theory is that it does not reliably predict behavior.  In his experiments, the relationship between observing & recreating violence was strong.  In later longitudinal studies, the relationship was much weaker.

Bowlby, Ainsworth, the incomparable Harlow & Attachment Theory

Attachment theory is one of my favorites, so I will try not to get too carried away here.  Much of the theory is easy to take for granted if you don’t consider the era in which it was born.  After my son was born, he really liked to be held, as most newborns do.  I recall talking to a much older mother who told me how after her children (now in their 50s) were born, her doctor told her not to hold them too much so as to avoid spoiling them & turning the boys into sissies.  Kind of shows you how attachment theory has changed our thinking in the last 50 or so years.  Anyway, on to the theory!

Attachment theory was developed in part by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth & contributed to by Harry Harlow’s research with rhesus monkeys.  The basic idea is that early relationships with caregivers play a major role in child development & continue to impact functioning & relationships throughout adulthood.  Again, this may inspire a “duh” reaction now, but 50 – 60 years ago, this was revolutionary stuff.  Attachment is a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings” (Bowlby, 1969, p. 194, qtd in Cherry n.d.).  According to attachment theory, infants who have mothers who are available and responsive will establish a sense of security & know that their caregivers can be relied upon.  Securely attached children will become distressed when they are separated from a caregiver & will be happy when the caregiver returns.  This is understood to be a normal reaction & indicative of a healthy or secure attachment.

Attachment theory got its start from the work of Bowlby & James Robertson, a social worker by trade.  Robertson created a film called “A Two Year Old Goes to the Hospital.”  You’ll never guess what it’s about!  All right, so that was kind of corny, but they film a young girl who goes in for an 8-day stay in an era when visits from parents were severely restricted by hospital policy.  What ensues (although I have not seen it) sounds totally heart-wrenching, as I’m sure you can imagine.  Bowlby argues that this young girl’s distress is not merely an unavoidable inconvenience, but rather a potentially serious psychiatric disturbance worth further investigation.  Check out more about it here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1918555/?page=1, including Robertson’s summary of the film & Bowlby’s commentary on it.

Bowlby also worked with Mary Ainsworth, who conducted the “Strange Situation” study in Baltimore, MD.  Wikipedia describes the set-up of the “Situation” here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ainsworth, but in essence, tot comes in with mom, mom leaves tot with stranger briefly, mom comes back, stranger leaves, stranger returns & mom leaves again.  Each interval is about 3 minutes, so mom never leaves the tot for long.  Based on the infant’s behavior during the “Situation,” Ainsworth & company came up with a classification system that described their reactions.  A securely attached infant will engage with the stranger when mom is around, but not when mom leaves, will be upset when mom leaves & will calm when mom returns.  An anxious resistant infant will be very upset when mom leaves, not particularly interested in the stranger even when mom is around & will be ambivalent when mom returns.  An anxious avoidant infant will avoid or ignore the mom altogether & won’t show much change regardless of who is in the room with him or her.  Lastly, they observed a disorganized style, that was for infants whose behavior defied classification due to being unpredictable, or displaying stereotyped behavior, like rocking or hitting themselves.

Finally, there is the work of Harry Harlow.  I think you would be remiss to talk about attachment theory & not talk about Harlow.  Harlow’s best known research was conducted from 1957 – 1963 & would likely not be approved by any contemporary IRB.  Nevertheless, inspired in part by Bowlby’s theorizing, Harlow separated infant rhesus monkeys from their mothers & offered them a choice between a soft terry mother or a hard wire mother.  There were two groups, and in one group, the terry mother had the bottle & in the other group, the wire mother had the bottle.  Conventional thinking of the era would dictate that the babies were governed by their need to eat & would go where the dinner was.  Harlow’s monkeys, however, wanted the terry mother, whether she had food or not & would jump to the wire mother to eat, then go right back to the terry mother.  If the monkeys were afraid, they would go to the terry mother, even if the wire mother was there with food.  Harlow also did some research on isolating the monkeys at birth.  Suffice it to say that monkeys who were raised in isolation, even if only for a few months, had a difficult time integrating in with the rest of the monkeys.

As I’ve said about a lot of these theories, this stuff might seem kind of obvious now, but at the time, it flew in the face of what the general understanding was about what made babies tick & what the love between a mother & her child is all about.  I promised not to get carried away, and I’m not altogether sure I kept the promise.  I hope you found this helpful & interesting.

Piaget & Cognitive Child Development Theories

Piaget’s theory is a little different from the theories covered thus far, in that Piaget was interested in cognitive development, rather than social/psychological development.  Piaget was the first to note that children play an active role in gaining knowledge of the world.  Although it may seem obvious now, it was a novel idea at the time.  Children, Piaget said, are like “little scientists” who actively pursue knowledge & develop an understanding of the world.  If you’ve ever watched a baby at play, dropping things to see what happens, then you’ll know this to be true!  Piaget believed that children’s cognitive abilities developed in fits & starts rather than as a smooth process.  He believed at about 18 mos, 7 years & 11 or 12 years thinking abilities would take off.  Piaget coined a number of terms to describe cognitive processes.  I will not delve into a full vocabulary here, as it does not seem necessary to my ends.  This site gives a nice & relatively straightforward Piaget vocab: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm, if you’re interested in learning more.  Piaget’s stages are covered below in a general way.  Piaget theorized that there were substages within each stage; however, covering the substages is beyond the scope of what I’m looking to achieve.

Piaget’s Stages:

Stage	Age	Description
Sensorimotor	Birth – approx age 2 (or language acquisition)	Develops reflexes, such as sucking, tracking objects by watching them, the palmar grasp (when a baby closes his or her hand around an object that touches the palm).  Develops motor skills, like sitting, crawling, walking (hence the name “sensorimotor”).  Later in this stage, they start experimenting with new behavior & begin to be able to set a goal & work towards it (I’m going to get that candy & go hide in the closet & eat it all!).
Preoperational	Age 2 – 7	Language development takes off & the child is able to represent objects with words, images & drawings.  They are not able to perform operations, meaning tasks that require use of logic or reasoning.  Children at this age are egocentric & unable to see things from other people’s perspective, literally or figuratively.
Concrete operational	Age 7 – 11	Child begins to be able to use logic & the ability to sort objects, classify objects & begins to be able to see things from another’s perspective.  Not able to think about abstract problems or concepts.
Formal operational	Age 11 into adulthood	Abstract reasoning develops & the individual reaches their full cognitive abilities.  Adolescents can understand things that are not strictly black-and-white.

• Critiques of Piaget’s theory:
• Subsequent research has contradicted much of Piaget’s theory & some work suggests that some processes develop more quickly or slowly than others.  For example, an individual kid might pick up logic more quickly, but be slower in developing language or motor skills.
• Some more recent critics suggest that development happens more smoothly than in the fits & starts that Piaget suggested.
• Some critics believe that many individuals never reach the level of abstract reasoning that Piaget theorized all people achieve in the formal operational stage.

Erikson & Stages of Psychosocial Development

Each stage of development is focused on overcoming a conflict.  Success or failure impacts overall functioning.  I find the names of the stages to be relatively self-explanatory, but this site: http://allpsych.com/psychology101/social_development.html has a decent discussion of each stage.  Erikson theorized that successful completion of each stage would result in a healthy, normal individual.  Unsuccessful completion of a stage could result in either an unhealthy personality or the inability to complete later stages.  Fortunately for those people, Erikson also believed that one could return to a previously unsuccessfully negotiated challenge & have a “re-do” so to speak.  Research around Erikson’s theory has lent credence to the theory.  For an interesting & more lengthy discussion of the theory, including a little bit of bio about Erikson visit here: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/erikson.html.  I found the bio & how he developed the theory pretty interesting stuff, but I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say that the clinical exam probably doesn’t ask where Erikson was born.

Stages are:

Life Stage	Psychosocial Challenge	Significant Others
Infancy (birth – age 1 or 1 ½)	Trust vs mistrust	Maternal caregiver
Early Childhood (age 1 ½ to 3)	Autonomy vs shame & doubt	Paternal caregiver
Play age (age 3 to 6)	Initiative vs guilt	Family
School age (Age 6 to 12)	Industry vs inferiority	Neighborhood
Adolescence (Age 12 to 18)	Identity vs identity diffusion	Peers
Young adult (Age 19 – 40)	Intimacy vs isolation	Partners
Adulthood (Age 40 – 65)	Generativity vs self-absorption	Household
Mature age (Age 65 on)	Integrity vs disgust & despair	Humanity

(credit to Walsh, 2006 for table, ages added from Wikipedia)

• Critiques of the theory:
• As with any linear model, one may question whether the stages must occur in the order in which they are presented.  Might there be recycling through stages?
• The adolescent stage in which the psychosocial challenge is identity presents a question to some people.  Do we only search for identity in the adolescent years?
• After the extensive criticism I found yesterday about Freud & his Psychosexual stages, the critiques on Erikson seem relatively slim.  Reviewing the material, I did find the age ranges to be somewhat restricting.  At the age of 29, I still see myself sorting out my identity at times & working in the next stage at other times, asking myself questions like, “What am I contributing to the world?”
• I did not really see anyone else pointing this out, although I’m sure I’m not the first, but the stages seem culture-bound to me.  In a culture where people mate earlier or later, or where autonomy is not emphasized as it is in our culture, I would suspect things might be a tad bit different.