SLT

Question 1

What is a symbolic model?

Answer 1

a type of role model who are present in the media e.g celebrities

Question 2

What is vicarious reinforcement?

Answer 2

reinforcement that is not directly experience but occurs through observation

Question 3

What is imitation?

Answer 3

a behaviour that is copied

Question 4

What is identification?

Answer 4

the extent to which you relate to the role model

Question 5

What is modelling?

Answer 5

displaying the desired behaviour

Question 6

What is the role of mediational processes?

Answer 6

they’re are cognitive mental processes that occur between the stimulus and the response that affect whether the learned behaviour is produced.

Question 7

What does SLT suggest?

Answer 7

That behaviour is learnt from experience but in a social context. Learning occurs through the observation of the behaviour of others. Concerned with human behaviour, not animal.

Question 8

What are the assumptions of the SLT approach?

Answer 8

• Learning occurs through the observation of the behaviour of others.
• Concerned with human behaviour, not animal.
• There are important mental processes that lie between the stimulus and response
• Sees people as active manipulators of their own environment, rather than receivers of experiences.
• Learning and performance are not the same activity.

Question 9

What are the mediational processes?

Answer 9

Motivation, attention, retention, reproduction

Question 10

What is motivation?

Answer 10

The will or desire to perform the behaviour (usually linked to vicarious reinforcement)

Question 11

What is attention?

Answer 11

Noticing and paying attention to the behaviour of the person they want to imitate

Question 12

What is retention?

Answer 12

remembering the behaviour so that they can do the same

Question 13

What is reproduction?

Answer 13

consideration of our ability to perform the behaviour

Question 14

What is a strength of SLT?

Answer 14

SLT has the advantage of being able to explain cultural differences in behaviour. Social learning principles can account for how children learn from other individuals around them as well as through the media, and this can explain how cultural norms are transmitted through societies. This supports the external validity of the approach as an explanation of behaviour as it can explain why behaviours are different across cultures due to expose to different role models and vicarious reinforcement.

Question 15

What is a weakness of SLT?

Answer 15

By focusing mainly on external behaviour, Bandura makes little reference to the impact of biological factors on social learning. In the Bobo dolls experiment, it was consistently found that boys were more aggressive than girls. This could be explained by hormonal factors such as testosterone, where the higher levels in boys may be linked to increased aggressive behaviour.

Question 16

What is a weakness of SLT related to offenders?

Answer 16

SLT cannot explain why people act differently when exposed to same role models and behaviours . For example, why vicarious reinforcement of offender behaviour leading to one person becoming an offender but another not. Additionally, it cannot account for all behaviour e.g why criminals and/or observed criminal behaviour.

Question 17

What is a strength of SLT relating to human behaviour?

Answer 17

Neither classical nor operant conditioning can offer offer an adequate account of learning on their own. Humans and many animals store information about the behaviour of others and use this to make judgements about when it is appropriate to perform certain actions. Bandura argued that it would be boring and dangerous to only learn from the consequences of our own behaviour. By observing others, we form an idea of how new behaviours are used and we can use these on later occasions. This suggests that SLT provides a more comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational processes.