Bandura Summary

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DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH BANDURA Background: Albert Bandura is best known for developing the Social Leaning Theory (SLT), an approach to child development that says children learn behaviours by observing those around them and then imitating them. The SLT agrees slightly with the behaviourist perspective, that is it tries to explain the cause of behaviour by studying only behaviours that can be observed by others. However the SLT also believes that cognitive processes need to be studied in order for us to understand behaviour. Aim: To see if children will observe a behaviour (in this case aggression) and then imitate it when they have the opportunity. Hypotheses: This study has four hypotheses: 1) Children who see an aggressive act will imitate it. The aggressive act won’t be seen in children who haven’t observed aggressive role models. 2) Children will imitate same-sex models more than opposite-sex models. 3) Observing an aggressive model will cause an increase in general aggressive behaviour whereas observing a non-aggressive model (or no model) will inhibit aggressive behaviour. 4) Boys will imitate aggression more than girls. Independent Variables (IVs): 1)The sex of the model, 2) The sex of the child, 3) The behaviour of model the child is exposed to. Dependent Variables (DVs): The dependent variable of this study is how many children imitate aggression when exposed to an aggressive model. 3 Conditions: The three conditions of the study were: 1) Aggressive, 2) Non-aggressive, 3)Control. Controls: Some of the controls used in this study are: The behaviour of the model. The length of time the child was left in each room. The people who took part in the study (e.g. experimenter, model; not the children). The activities the child did. The rooms used. How Data Was Gained: The children
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