Albert Bandura

1925-present

Sociocultural Theory of Learning

Born December 4, 1925 in Alberta, CanadaEducation:Bachelors degree in Psychology-Univ.of

British Columbia 1949University of Iowa-received PH.D 1952Postdoctural position at Wichita Guidance

Center in Wichita, KSStanford University- 1953, still teaching there

today.

Biography

President of APA – 1973 Received APA’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions

1980 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980. In 1999 he received the Thorndike Award for Distinguished

Contributions of Psychology to Education from the American Psychological Association, and in 2001, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Western Psychological Association, the James McKeen Cattell Award from the American Psychological Society, and the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychological Science from the American Psychological Foundation. In 2008, he received the Grawemeyer Award for contributions to psychology.

Awards

Took behaviorism to new heightsOriginal theory:Reciprocal determinism -environment

causes behavior but behavior also causes environment

Theory

Began to look at personality along with environment and behavior

Consists of ability to entertain images in our minds and language

By adding “imagery” he was able to theorize more efficiently about observational learning(modeling) and self-regulation

“Father of Cognitivist Movement”

BoBo Doll Studies and the Social Learning Theory

Certain steps that need to happen for modeling to occur

Attention Individual needs to be paying attention for

learning to happen Unable to learn if sleepy, drugged, sick, or

distracted by competing stimuli

Modeling Process

RetentionIndividual must be able to retain what they

paid attention toStorage of what the individual saw the model

do in the form of mental images and verbal descriptions

When stored – able to bring up the image so that it can be duplicated in individuals own behavior

Modeling Process

ReproductionHave to have ability to reproduce the

behavior Improvement of behavior occurs if individual

learns from someone that does it betterAbility improves with practiceAbility improves even if just imagine

ourselves performing well

Modeling Process

Motivation“Gotta Wanna”

Motives:Past reinforcement- traditional behaviorismPromised reinforcements- incentivesVicarious reiforcement- seeing and recalling

the model being reinforced

Modeling Process

Other variations of the BoBo Doll studies included filming of a woman beating up a live clown. When the children went into the room with the live clown, they proceeded to hit, kick and use hammers to strike the clown until they were stopped.

This aggression again modeled that attention, reproduction and motivation are needed for learning to occur.

Discussion

Dr. Albert Bandura has had an enormous impact on personality theory and therapy. His research has been called the “bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation. The theory is related to Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory and Lave’s Situated Learning, which also emphasize the importance of social learning.”(2)

Discussion

Dr. Banduras also did extensive research on self-regulation, of which I will not go into detail here. If interested, please refer to his works:

Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press.

Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of Behavior Modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Bandura, A. & Walters, R. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Self-regulation

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura2.

http://www.learning-theories.com/social-learning-theory-bandura.html

3.http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html

Works Cited