Albert Bandura
By Karima Guendouz
The major reason that let people determine if a child is normally learning and
growing that he/she is physically healthy. They take in mind that if a child walks well,
talks, or sing correctly at an early age as ten months is because this child has strong
physical and cognitive abilities. But is this explains all the time how and why children
learn a certain behavior and grow in a certain way? Many theorists tried to explain the
factors involved in early childhood development. One of these theorists is Albert Bandura
who has a big influence in this field in particularly by his social learning theory. Even
though this theory concern individuals in general children were specifically the main
target. His main belief is that individuals including children learn by observing others.
Based on this, who is Albert Bandura? What exactly the social learning theory means?
Does this theory affected or is still affecting early childhood development?.
Who is Albert Bandura?
Albert Bandura was born in Mundare, Canada in 1925. He was the youngest of
six children, and he was raised in a small farming community in Canada (Isom, 1998).
His parents migrated from Eastern Europe. His father was from Poland, and his mother
from Ukraine. Bandura spent his elementary and high school years at one school and in
one city due to lack of resources (Thom, 2009). In 1949, he graduated from British
Columbia, Vancouvert, Canada with a Bolocan Award in psychology, which is only
given fro top students (Thom, 2009). In 1952, Bandura obtained his Ph. D. from the
University of Iowa, and during studying at this University, he developed the social
learning theory. In 1953, Albert Bandura began teaching at the University of Stanford
and until now he is still working there. In 1972, he received a distinguished achievement
award from the America Psychological Association, and in 1974 he was elected president
of the same organization. He has written several books and articles that had a huge
impact in psychological research. Bandura's first book in collaboration with Richard
walters-who was his student- called "Adolescent Aggression". In 1973, he wrote "
Aggression: Asocial Learning Analysis" Four years later, he published the most well
known of his books which is called” Social Learning Theory", this theory suggested that
people obtain new modes of behaviors through imitation, which is achieved by
observation (Isom, 1998)
The social learning Theory
The social learning theory is one of Albert Bandura's most contemporary
proponents of the cognitive view of learning which states that people learn by observing
cognitively and imitating others behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others
(Lahey, 2012). According to Bandura's theory, children observe the people surrounding
them including family member, friends, and characters on televions. All of them act like
models that children observe and imitate (McLeod, 2011). Being known for using in his
research experimental analysis of social situations (Grusec, 1992), Bandura used this
method to illustrate and explain the concept of modeling in the social learning theory.
Albert Bandura’s modeling concept (experiment)
One of the most famous experiment Bandura conducted about modeling and it’s role in
promoting learning, specifically, children’s is the “Bobo Doll” experiment. Bandura
showed a video to a few children, which was about adult person being violent to a Bobo
doll. They hit and kicked continuously the doll, and after the children watched the video,
they were put in a playroom with the exact same doll and toys. In fact the children did the
same behavior toward the doll as the adult person did. They kicked and punched the doll,
at the same time they used all the toys surrounding it to be even more aggressive. They
used a gun and a hammer shaped toys, a ball by which they hit the Bobo doll (Albert
Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment). In general, the study showed that the children
imitated the behavior they observed before they were exposed to the doll. As a result, it is
a concrete evidence that modeling plays a huge role in learning others behaviors,
including aggressive ones. Furthermore, the experience resulted another concept involved
in Bandura’s theory, which is observational learning.
Observational learning
Observational learning means that learning occurs when individuals observe and imitate
others. He developed four factors that are involved in the observational learning, which
are attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation.
1. Attention: it means that individuals perceive and pay attention to all the features
of the behavior that is being observed. Children must attend to what the aggressor
is doing in order to reproduce the behavior exactly as observed, and the Bobo doll
experiment effectively illustrated the concept.
2. Motor reproduction: which is the ability to execute the model’s behavior by the
same physical capabilities. Like in the experiment, the children had enough
physical strength to hit the doll violently as the adult did, and they were even
more aggressive.
3. Retention: It is the process of coding and memorizing information in the longterm memory while observing a behavior, and being able to retrieve them easily
when needed.
4.
Motivation or Reinforcement: it means that the observer expects to receive
positive reinforcement for the modeled behavior. If children see an aggressive
behavior that is rewarded they will likely to do the same act for the same rewards
(Isom, 1998).
In addition, Bandura in the 60s and 70s focused in and provided evidence of the role
of observational learning in acquiring behaviors, which let him to come up with two
new concept, aggression and self-efficacy.
Aggression: After publishing his book “Adolescent Aggression” provided evidence
that individual, as young as children who are being reinforced by family members is
the most prominent source of modeling. Children model the same tactics parents or
family members use while expressing aggressiveness. To control aggression, it should
be done in the early years of a child. Children learn to act aggressively when they
model their behavior after violent acts of adults including a family member. If a boy
witnessed as a child his father repeatedly strikes his mother, he will more than likely
to become an abusive parent and husband, as well (Isom, 1998). Also, when Albert
Bandura interviewed adolescent boys and most of them were delinquent, he
concluded that the aggressive boys suffer from dependency anxiety created by lack of
parental affection and presence, which means that anti-social behaviors are in
majority caused by neglect and rejection (Grusec, 1998). Based on this and on the
Bobo doll experiment, Bandura emphasized on the environmental influence as a
factor related to violence in children. In fact, children who have most exposure to
media may express relatively the aggressive behavior they witnessed by watching
television (Isom, 1998).
Self-efficacy: About this concept, Albert Bandura once said, “What people think,
believe and feel, affect how they behave”. The belief and the feeling a person has
about his/her own abilities, creates one’s confidence to handle and behave effectively
a situation. The more experience an individual has the higher self-efficacy he or she
will have (Krowford, 2009). According to Bandura, self-efficacy is the perception of
being able of achieving one’s goals (Lahey, 2011).
Conclusion:
Even though some critics argue that Bandura’s theory of learning neglected the
biological and genetic factors (Isom, 1998), and that not every child exposed to violence
and media is likely to acquire aggressive behaviors, I think his learning theory is more
logical and consistence with the facts. Bandura was able to connect the cognitive and the
social (environmental) factors in learning. His findings provide prominent explanations
and evidences about the role of being around others, observation, memory, imitation, in
learning some behaviors in a society. The most important take away from his theory about
childhood development, is that adults behaviors and observation are the two keys of
learning and introducing a child to the social word.
Reflection about the research paper
This paper allowed me to learn what the modeling theory means to early childhood
development as a whole. I discovered how acting like others or imitating can be critical in
gaining something among children. Watching and reflecting on the the BoBo Doll
experiment, allowed me to believe more on the effect of what children see whether
behavior or objects that influence the way they act and learn at the same time. While I was
doing this paper, I introduced myself to what this field is all about, and showed my
abilities in understanding a theorist ideas and researches.