Psychology (Observation, insight and latent Learning) – Flashcards

Occurs when someone uses observation of another person's actions and their consequences to guide their future actions, the person being observed is referred to as a model.

Learner pays attention in order to observe the modeled behaviour.

Learner mentally represents and retains what has been observed.

Depending on physical capabilities, the learner converts the mental representations into actions.

Reinforcement influences motivation of learner to perform the learned behaviour.

An individual watches another person displaying behaviour that is either reinforced or punished.

Increases the likelihood of the observer behaving in a similar way to a model whose behaviour is reinforced.

Occurs when the likelihood of an observer performing a particular behaviour decreases after having seen a model's behaviour being punished.

1940 - Suzuki developed a successful method for teaching the violin to children at a young age using these four stages of observational learning.

The teacher occasionally stops to see if the child has become distracted or not paying attention and then continues to show the child as long as they are observing.

The child is taught to retain how to play the instrument through games and musical activities such as hiding a dot on the violin where your fingers are supposed to go, the child then holds these games in memory.

As long as they are capable, the child holds the violin and uses the bow to press on the strings by playing games with their hands.

The child is motivated by seeing the teacher acting lively and interesting as model and also by playing violin games that the child finds entertaining and avoiding those that involve competition and do not interest the child very much.

Young children observed an adult (the model) either play friendly or beat up a blow up doll. Based on their observations these children reproduced the behaviours of the model. Those who watched the adult beat up the doll, beat up the doll themselves. Those who watched the adult play friendly with the doll played friendly with the doll themselves.

Two groups of children watched two different types of violence on TV (cartoon and human violence). The number of aggressive acts each group made after watching the clip on TV were similar meaning that children can learn from observing human and cartoon models.

Children watched two aggressive models, one who was reinforced for their aggressive actions and one who was punished for their aggressive actions. It was found that observational learning was influenced by the consequences (or lack of them) for the adult models. Children who observed the model being rewarded were more likely to imitate the models aggressive behaviour, and those who saw the model being punished were not as likely to imitate the models aggressive behaviour.

Insight learning is a type of learning involving a period of mental manipulation of information associated with a problem, prior to the realization of a solution to the problem. The learning is to have occurred when the relationships relevant to the solution are grasped. It appears to occur in a flash.

Sometimes learning only becomes evident when we need to utilize it. According to psychologists, this "hidden" learning that only manifests itself when reinforcement is offered is known as latent learning.