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1. Describe Bandura\'s Social Cognitive Theory. Give application/examples at eac

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Question

1. Describe Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory. Give application/examples at each age level (infancy through late adulthood). 2. How could individual differences (cultural, ethnic, gender, linguistic, and socio-economic differences) affect student behavior and individual learning needs/preferences/styles? 3. What does current research say about learning styles and multiple intelligences? (Don't simply define the theories and list the styles/intelligences Please look up a research study and tell us some results of what has been found out regarding these theories being used with real people.) 4. Describe Skinner's theory of operant conditioning. Give application/examples at each age level (infancy through late adulthood). Describe the stages of physical development from infancy through older adulthood. Respond to at least one classmate using the ABC format.

Explanation / Answer

1.Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) started as the Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the 1960s by Albert Bandura. It developed into the SCT in 1986 and posits that learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction of the person, environment, and behavior. The unique feature of SCT is the emphasis on social influence and its emphasis on external and internal social reinforcement. SCT considers the unique way in which individuals acquire and maintain behavior, while also considering the social environment in which individuals perform the behavior. The theory takes into account a person's past experiences, which factor into whether behavioral action will occur. These past experiences influences reinforcements, expectations, and expectancies, all of which shape whether a person will engage in a specific behavior and the reasons why a person engages in that behavior. Human especially children learn new behavior by modeling others' behaviors through observational learning processes whereas children learn new behaviors and strengthen their behavior by observing the effect of others' behaviors and copy it through vicarious reinforcement processes. In observational learning processes, children require model such as parents, siblings, teachers and peers but not reinforcement. Models are important because it allows children to cognitively process, encode and store displayed behaviors. Models might purposely or not purposely show certain behaviors to children and children probably go through modeling processes from various models. Apart from that, vicarious reinforcement processes need both models and reinforcement and it is often used to remind or inform others the advantages or disadvantages of doing something. Children especially newborns, infants and toddlers are more probability to imitate other as there are still in 'doing' and 'thinking' stage. They learn by observe and imitate others. Children are leaning from observation as early as they born. For example, according to Harris and Liebert (1992), a six days old baby girl stick out her tongue after her mother showed the action repeatedly in front of her. Based on theory of modeling, newborns are having problems to immediately imitate their models' behavior. It is because newborns' brain equipped with 100 billion brain cells or neurons. Before age two, children begin to imitate their models' action some time later. It is due to the growth of their sensorimotor and cognitive system. After age two, children can imitate their models' action immediately in form of verbally response or repetition actions. Rewarding and punishment give impact on observers' imitation. When someone is rewarding for imitate modeled behaviors, its reinforce them to continue the behavior. If someone get not meaningful rewards for imitate modeled behaviors, its reinforce them to discontinue the behavior. In preschool stage, children already face with limitation from parents especially involving home rules and norms. At this stage, children love to play outdoors and be friends with others; as they imitate their parents' social skills. This worries the parents as the children might become too friendly with strangers or even with kidnappers. Thus, parents will stop them from playing outside of the house for a certain time. This limitation depressed the children and affects their development. For instance, mothers always teach their newborns to call them "mom" and they will give kisses to the babies if they can utter it in their own language. It acts as a reward to the infants. Frequently children are reinforced by food, affection and punishment in modeling process. Self efficacy or self effectiveness will slowly develop in infancy stage as they start to involve in physical and social environments. They begin to learn about the effects of their own action which they imitated from models and these effects give them strength or weaken their development. The little boy might think that the more he tries to hold his toy, the more kisses he can get from his mother. Same goes as aggressive behavior shown by children because of their family environment; violent fathers, short-tempered siblings or even being ignored by the mothers will affect the children' self efficacy. They might having fears and phobias with adults, feeling insecurities to make friends and become a quiet, gloomy child or involve in bullies. This certainly affects children performance as they grow. Cognitive system of children is developing by stages. They go through changes from basic senses development, imaginational skills and sensorimotor slowly shows progression until they move to much challenging phrases, adolescents. Children learn behaviors from parents, siblings' interactions, teachers' instructions, television cartoons and other media sources. All of these medium play important roles in children observation and modeling learning. In observational learning, there are four processes involved; attention, retention, production and incentive and motivational processes. Result from Bobo Doll studies shows that children can learn all types of behavior, positive manners or negative actions. Hence, the impact of this theory can cause either helpful or harmful behaviors learning. As teenagers and yound adults,we do observe and maybe learn and adapt certain behaviour we see around us,either in media or in people.Teenagers through observation and wanting to be included in a social group start holding similar opinions with others,based on observational learning.Also watching movies or advertisements does have an influence on their behaviours. As adults as well our political opinions and consumer behaviour is based on observational learning.If our favourite celebrity is endorsing something,it is likely it would grab our attention and we might end up using the same product. Social learning keeps happening then entire though observational learning and reinforcements around us.