Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence. Laura E. Levine
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TRUE/FALSE VIDEO
Punishment: Administering a negative consequence or taking away a positive reinforcement to reduce the likelihood of an undesirable behavior occurring.
Extinction: In operant conditioning, when a lack of response from the environment makes a behavior stop.
Figure 2.4 Punishment and Extinction.
T/F #3
The best way to get rid of an undesirable behavior in a child is to punish the child for doing it. False
Modern Applications of Operant Conditioning
An approach called applied behavior analysis (ABA) uses operant conditioning techniques in schools (Zoder-Martell, Dieringer, & Dufrene, 2017) and with children in special populations to increase adaptive behaviors and decrease maladaptive ones (Myers & Plauche Johnson, 2007). A therapist first observes a child to determine where, when, and how often a problematic behavior is occurring and then identifies the rewards or reinforcements the child is getting from it, setting a goal for the child’s behavior and implementing changes to work toward that goal. This could involve ignoring the problematic behavior or punishing it, if necessary, while rewarding an alternative desired behavior in its place (Neitzel & Bogin, 2008). For example, a child might be annoying peers in a classroom because it gets him sent to detention where he doesn’t have to do his class work. In this case, the way this behavior is being dealt with is unintentionally rewarding the misbehavior by getting the student out of doing his work. The intervention might be that the classroom teacher ignores the misbehavior whenever possible so the behavior isn’t reinforced or there might be negative consequences for it, such as being required to do something else the child doesn’t like to do when he is not doing his class work. At the same time, the child might receive reinforcement such as positive attention or small rewards for appropriate behaviors, such as paying attention to his work. This procedure has been used successfully with autistic children to improve language and sociability (Lablanc, Richardson, & McIntosh, 2005; Simpson et al., 2005), as well as to reduce behavioral problems in children with multiple disabilities (O’Mea, 2013).
Applied behavior analysis (ABA): Application of principles of behaviorism to change problematic behavior of individuals with a range of difficulties.
Albert Bandura and Social Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura, who was originally trained as a behaviorist, became discontented with behaviorism because it is difficult or impossible to identify either stimuli or reinforcements for the entire range of human behavior (Pajares & Schunk, 2002). Bandura (1986) proposed that, in addition to classical and operant conditioning, people can learn new behaviors simply by watching others and imitating them rather than by receiving direct reinforcement of their own behaviors. He initially called his theory a social learning theory because the learning occurs from watching other people (social).
Albert Bandura. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory contributed the idea that people learn new behaviors by watching and imitating them rather than being directly reinforced.
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Bandura’s earliest work showed how children learn by direct observation. In his classic experiment, one group of children observed an adult in a video act aggressively to a Bobo doll (a large inflated figure of a clown that is weighted on the bottom), hitting it, kicking it, throwing it, and striking it with a toy hammer (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963). These children and another group of children who had not seen the video were then brought individually into a room containing the Bobo doll and other toys. The children who had seen the adult attacking the Bobo doll were much more likely to imitate the adult’s violent behavior in the video. In contrast, the children who hadn’t seen the adult model attacking the Bobo doll were less likely to carry out these aggressive acts. Bandura concluded that observing a model may provoke a more generalized response based on the children’s understanding of what was happening. In this case, they may have specifically seen the adult hit the Bobo doll, but they also understood that the generalized idea was to be aggressive to the doll.
Bandura’s experiment on modeling. What did this boy and girl learn by watching the adult in the film shown in the top row?
Albert Bandura
Bandura later placed greater emphasis on the cognitive, or thinking, aspects of behavior development and specifically on thinking about our own ability to have control in our lives. He renamed his theory social cognitive theory to emphasize that thought has social origins but is then processed through our own cognitive interpretations.
Modern Applications of Social Cognitive Theory
In more recent years, Bandura’s research based on social cognitive theory has focused on self-efficacy or “the core belief that one has the power to influence one’s own functioning and life circumstances” (Bandura, Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, & Regalia, 2001, p. 125). The concept of self-efficacy is related to the field of positive psychology, described in Chapter 1. The focus is on what people can accomplish rather than what their limitations are. Using social cognitive theory, interventions have been developed to promote self-efficacy in a number of countries. In Mexico, a television drama series was developed that addressed issues of illiteracy, showing people struggling at first, but then successfully reading. At the end of the series, a well-known actor told viewers about a self-study program for literacy development. The next day 25,000 people showed up to enroll in the program (Bandura, 2008).
Self-efficacy: A belief in our ability to influence our own functioning and our life circumstances.
Check Your Understanding
Knowledge Questions
1 According to behaviorism, what is the most important influence on human behavior?
2 How are classical and operant conditioning similar, and how are they different?
3 What is the basic learning principle of social cognitive theory?
Critical Thinking
How would you study if you knew you were going to have a quiz that would give you points toward your final grade every 2 weeks? Compare that to how you would study if you knew you would have quizzes but didn’t know when they would be given. Which schedule would likely result in more consistent study habits? How does this relate to Skinner’s ideas about the effect of the timing and frequency of reinforcement?
Theories of Cognitive Development
The following theories of cognitive development focus on the processes of the mind, including thinking and learning. We introduce these ideas in this chapter and then examine them further in Chapters 6, 9,