Social-Cognitive Learning

Question 1

What is the social-cognitive theory?

Answer 1

• Incorporates concepts of conditioning from behaviourism but adds cognition and social learning
• Indirect learning → Without direct reinforcement or punishment
• Learning taking place socially and vicariously
• Requires active judgement and constructive processes

Question 2

What is latent learning?

Answer 2

• Learning that has occured but has not yet manifested into behaviour
  
  • Cognitive Maps → Mental representations or images of a familiar location = Knowledge shown with reinforcement
  • Tolman (against behaviourism) said rats developed “ rather than chained responses to external cues
• Evidence that knowledge or beliefs about the environment are crucial to the way animals behave
• Tolman argued that learning can occur in the absence of rewards and punishments
• Learning observable when reward introduced

Tolman

Question 3

What is a cognitive explanation for CC?

Answer 3

• Presence of CS (NS) alerts the animal to prepare for a UCS that is likely to follow → CS predicts UCS
• If UCS presented repeatedly alone → Unlikely to develop CR regardless of number of times UCS is paired with CS

Question 4

What is a cognitive explanation for OC?

Answer 4

• Intermittent reinforcement schedules → Expectation that reinforcement will only come intermittently
  
  • ∴ Lack of reinforcement temporarily does not signal an environmental change
• Continuous = More likely to extinguish
  
  • Change in environment → Stop response because of expectation of continuous reinforcement

Question 5

What is insight?

Answer 5

• Sudden understanding of the relation between a problem and a solution
  
  • Appear suddenly → Accompanied by subjective experience of surprise
  • Appear after period of unsuccessful attempts
  • Involve approaching problem in new way

Question 6

What are expectancies?

Answer 6

• An individuals expectations about the consequences of a behaviour
  
  • Expect reinforcement = More likely to perform
• Generalised → Influence a broad spectrum of behaviour
• Locus of Control
  
  • Internal → Can control own fate (more likely to learn)
  • External → Life is pre-determined

Question 7

What is learned helplessness?

Answer 7

• Expectancy that one cannot escape aversive events

Question 8

What is explanatory style?

Answer 8

• The way people make sense of bad events
  
  • Pessimistic → Blame themselves for bad events
  • Optimistic → Positive illusions = Only adaptive until the point of denying obvious realities

Question 9

What is learned optimism?

Answer 9

• People can learn to be optimistic
• Cultivate positive thinking by consciously challenging negative self-talk

Question 10

What is observational learning?

Answer 10

• Learning via observing the behaviour of others
  
  • Modelling → Reproduce behaviour exhibited by a model

Question 11

What is vicarious conditioning?

Answer 11

• Individual learns the consequences of an action by observing its consequences for someone else

Question 12

Within Albert Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment, what 4 novel aggressive responses were displayed in the film?

Answer 12

• Laid doll on its side → Punched it in the nose
  
  • “Pow, right in the nose, boom, boom”
• Raised the doll → Pommelled it on the head with a mallet
  
  • “Sockeroo …stay down”
• Kicked doll about the room
  
  • “Fly away”
• Threw rubber balls at the Bobo doll
  
  • “Bang”

Question 13

What did the Bobo Doll experiment show (in relation to consequences)?

Answer 13

• Vicarious reinforcement and punishment
  
  • Learning can occur socially via observation → Absence of directly experienced consequences
  • Performance of aggressive acts influenced by mental representations fo observed consequences
  • Knowledge was latent (was learnt) but not shown until reward offered