Reflection: Social Cognitive Learning

General Principles of Social Cognitive Theory

• Observing

            Watching the behavior of other individuals (model)

• Without a change in behavior

  People can learn through observation alone, their learning will not necessarily be reflected in their actions. something learned at one time may be reflected in behavior exhibited at the same time at a later time, or never.

• Consequences  

Contemporary social cognitive theorists propose that both reinforcement and punishment (consequences) have less critical, indirect effects on learning  

• Cognition

Over the past 30 years, social cognition theory has become increasingly "cognitive" in its analysis of human learning :

1. maintain the awareness of response-reinforcement and response-punishment as an essential component of the learning process.
2. Assert that expectations of future reinforcements and punishments can have major impact on the behavior that people exhibit.
3. incorporate such cognitive processes as attention and retention (memory) into their explanations of how learning occurs. 

• Control

People can take active steps to create or modify their environments, perhaps by making changes themselves, or perhaps by convincing others to offer assistance and support - they often do so consciously and intentionally.

Bandura's triadic model of reciprocal determinism

Modeling

The Modeling Process

Not all observed behaviors are effectively learned. Factors involving both the model and the learner can play a role in whether social learning is successful. Certain requirements and steps must also be followed. The following steps are involved in the observational learning and modeling process

Attention:

In order to learn, you need to be paying attention. Anything that detracts your attention is going to have a negative effect on observational learning. If the model interesting or there is a novel aspect to the situation, you are far more likely to dedicate your full attention to learning.

Retention:

The ability to store information is also an important part of the learning process. Retention can be affected by a number of factors, but the ability to pull up information later and act on it is vital to observational learning.

Reproduction:

Once you have paid attention to the model and retained the information, it is time to actually perform the behavior you observed. Further practice of the learned behavior leads to improvement and skill advancement.

Motivation:

Finally, in order for observational learning to be successful, you have to be motivated to imitate the behavior that has been modeled. Reinforcement and punishment play an important role in motivation. While experiencing these motivators can be highly effective, so can observing other experience some type of reinforcement or punishment. For example, if you see another student rewarded with extra credit for being to class on time, you might start to show up a few minutes early each day.