PSYC 2020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 36: Reinforcement, Observational Learning
PSYC 2020 Lecture 36 Notes
Introduction
Social cognitive theory
• When parents want to encourage their daughter to clean her room, they could use
positive reinforcement by rewarding her with praise, food, or money whenever she
completed the chore.
• Negative reinforcement consists of rewarding people by taking away unpleasant things.
• The same parents could use negative reinforcement by saying that whenever their
daughter leaed her roo, she ould’t hae to ash the dishes or fold laudry.
• A punishment is a consequence that decreases the future likelihood of the behavior that
it follows.
• Punishment suppresses a behavior by either adding something aversive or by
withholding a pleasant event.
• When the child failed to clean her room, the parents could punish her by making her do
extra chores (adding something aversive) or by not allowing her to watch television
(withholding a pleasant event).
• Applied properly, reinforcement and punishment are indeed powerful influences on
children.
• However, researchers discovered that children sometimes learn without reinforcement
or punishment.
• Children learn much simply by watching those around them, which is known as imitation
or observational learning.
• For example, imitation occurs when one toddler throws a toy after seeing a peer do so
• When a school-age hild offers to help a older adult arry groeries eause she’s see
her parents do the same, or, as in the photo, when a son tries to shave like his father.
• Perhaps iitatio akes you thik of okey-see, monkey-do, or siple iikig.
• Early investigators had this view, too, but research quickly showed that this was wrong.
• Children do not always imitate what they see around them.
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