This is a short summary of the results of the research by Bandura and colleagues in 1963 known as the ‘Bobo doll studies’ (Oates 2012). Some of these outcomes are produced in a table contained in the Assignment booklet (The Open University (2013)) which shows the average number of aggressive acts performed by children towards a blow up doll. The chart shows 5 variants on how each group of children saw the role model perform the aggression towards the doll. These variations were a real life male and female model, a filmed male and female model, and where no model was used so no aggression shown to imitate. I make three main observations: 0 If the role model is of the same sex then generally the imitative aggression increases.
How and why Bandura’s research on imitative aggression can be relevant for parents. Purpose of this report: • summarise Bandura and briefly explain his experiment on imitative aggression • identify the findings on imitative aggression • beneficial effects of Bandura’s research for parents Background Albert Bandura is a Canadian psychologist, working at Stanford University in USA, where in 1961 he and his colleagues conducted well known and influential Bobo Doll experiment on a group of ninety-six children of age between 3 and 6. The purpose of this experiment was to examine if children would imitate aggressive actions carried by another person or character. Moreover, Bandura wanted to find out what factors would influence children’s behaviour thus he divided children by gender (Oates, 2012, p.109) and introduce them to three different variations: a real-life person, a human-film person, and a “cartoon”-film person, which were called ‘models’ (Assignment Booklet, 2013, p.11). Also, models in first two groups were divided by gender.
Gopnik first uses a personal experience to captivate her audience then proceeds to provide scientific evidence on the psychological abilities of children, beginning with newborn babies to toddlers about the age of four. The author informs readers on the thought capabilities of children by providing examples of the changes in mind development in different age categories. She suggests that "newborn babies (the youngest tested was only 42 minutes old) can imitate facial expressions" (Gopnik, 238) and how children that are nine months old can already distinguish between internal feelings such as happiness, sadness and anger. Gopnik recaps experiments that discover how children have learnt about people's wants and how they may conflict with their own in this portion of her writing. Two year old children seem to turn intentionally difficult and challenge their parents constantly, letting desire take control.
By two years old, children begin testing and exploring this idea. Three year olds understand visual perception and the concept of hiding objects. By the time a child is four, they understand that people can have incorrect thoughts about the world. In opposition to the traditional understanding that babies and young children learn and think differently than adults, Gopnik suggests that babies and young children use the same learning methods as scientists. They “observe, formulate theories, make predictions, and do experiments” (Gopnik, 237) to learn about people, objects, and their surroundings.
For this writing assignment I have visited a few toy stores (Toy House, Toys R Us) recently to do Observational and Descriptive research on gender role development in the boys and girls sections for ages 4-7 years of age. In the next few paragraphs I will be describing and sharing what I have observed on the differences between the boys and girls sections. Compared to what I remember and seen as a child myself. Some of the things that I noticed right away in the boys sections were that about 70% of the toys were louder and made many different sounds. Some of these sounds were that of fire truck sirens, play toy guns, and action figures that spoke words.
Both of these men believe, that to a certain extent, people have many innate traits. To this day there has been no definitive research as to which shapes us more: our environment or our genetics. Many behaviors are learned from our parents, which is nurture. For example, safety. As kids, we’re all curious.
UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOUR –A STUDY BY BANDURA, ROS AND ROSS (1963) This report aims to: * Explain how and why research carried out by psychologists named Bandura, Ross and Ross, explained how social learning by children and the acts of aggression have helped us understand their behaviour. * Explain what they did to measure the types of aggression and what situations the children were put in * Issues raised by the research and whether it is applicable to working and understanding children’s behaviour Introduction In 1963 a group of psychologists called Bandura, Ross and Ross carried out a series of experiments involving children aged between 3 and 6, to find out if children replicated acts of violence. They were interested in the theory of “social learning”, a theory that the children learn socially from their environment by watching others around them. They were interested to see what actually triggered the aggression off and what sorts of aggression were shown. The experiments Bandura, Ross and Ross created four separate experiments to see if the children would imitate the acts of aggression shown to them, using what they called a “bobo doll” as the trigger object, a large blow up doll, something like a Kelly toy.
General Principle of Social Learning Theory 1. People can learn through observation. I n his famous "Bobo doll" studies, Bandura demonstrated that children learn and imitate behaviors they have observed in other people. The children in Bandura’s studies observed an adult acting violently toward a Bobo doll. When the children were later allowed to play in a room with the Bobo doll, they began to imitate the aggressive actions they had previously observed.
Feldman (2009) defines the nature nurture debate as the issue of the degree to which environment and hereditary factors influence the behaviour. According to Flanagan (2002) nature refers to behavioural or physical traits found in a developing child that are due to genetic factors. Feldman (2009:39) says “nature refers to hereditary factors, characteristics and tendencies that influence development.” Thus nature can be defined as inborn characteristics such as generic diseases evident in a developing child. Santrock (2004) defines nurture as environmental factors that have an influence on the development of a human being. According to Bernstein (2011) nurture refers to all environmental influence, after the birth of a child that affects development.
The main reason for this study was because the authors were interested in seeing if there was a link between child behavioral problems such as, hyperactivity and inattention, and playing video games or if other factors played a bigger role in child behavioral problems. The researchers gathered 788 parents of preschool children between the ages of two and five; while also, gathering 391 parents of children between the ages of six and eight and separated them into four different groups. Low risk preschoolers, high risk preschools, low risk school-age children, high risk school-age children, these groups were determined by cumulating the risk and parenting styles of each of the children and concluded that factors such as home environment, quality of parent-child relationship, played a bigger role in a child’s behavior problems than video games. However, they did discover that video game exposure was a good way to predict if a low-risk preschooler would have higher levels of hyperactivity, in their study one out of every four had this behavioral problem, although they did not find this to be the case with any other kind of student or behavioral problems. This is important because children behavioral problems have been studied in detail and researchers have tried to narrow down what plays into them and how to predict what type of children will have them; likewise, this study showed that both nonviolent and violent video games, do not play into a massive number of children’s behavioral problems.