Flashcards
Immitation and social learning
Cards in this deck (18)
- 1Imitation and Social Learning- Learning that comes from other people:
• With the physical world = we are watching things happen in the physical world – watching a ball roll down a hill etc a lot to do with watching and trial and error etc.
• Learning about the social world = learning about other people, predicting what they are going to do.
• Social learning = is more to do with how people learn by watching/listening to others do things
W - 2Why is imitation important to developmental psychology Which early theorists have included it in their accounts of development?-The idea that children acquire behaviors by observing and copying others has been given an important role in empiricist (Miller and Dollard, 1941) and constructivist (e.g. Piaget, 1945) accounts of development since the early days of the field.
*However imitation also has a place in many theories that are nativists.
What is imitation?
• Although piaget’s talks about the importance of imitation and so do many other behaviourists – kind of hides the fact that people don’t really agree on what imitation is, what we call imitation
E.G certain things people call imitation historically that now would no longer be viewed as imitation.
• For a proper developmental account of imitation clearly requires agreement as to what is developing
• Due to this the last 20 years have seen a lot of theoretical and experimental work to develop a coherent framework for thinking about imitation, and for understanding the diverse behaviors that fall under the umbrella term. - 3What issues with theorizing around immitation?• Although Piaget's talks about the importance of imitation and so do many behaviorist theories – a lot of people don’t really agree on what imitation is, what we call imitation
E.G certain things people call imitation historically that now would no longer be viewed as imitation.
For a proper developmental account of imitation clearly requires agreement as to what is developing
• Due to this the last 20 years have seen a lot of theoretical and experimental work to develop a coherent framework for thinking about imitation, and for understanding the diverse behaviors that fall under the umbrella term. - 4What is involved in immiation? 3 key parts:E.G Learning something simple – how to make a cup of tea
- It is a simple act but multiple components of this act that are important – are also relevant to other theories of social learning.
1) Goal = initial goal set out to acheive to make tea for example when someone is performing these actions they had the goal as their aim – not just playing around with objects.
2) Action: completing certain actions in order to reach target goal and intention (to achieve the set result).
3) Result : Achieving this target goal and intention from their actions. - 5Neonate mimicry of facial gestures: Who built a theory around this idea?- There are some simple behaviors/social learning behaviors that are not imitation but are quite related; such as mimicry.
-Neo-nates found to copy face expressions of adults: found adults could pull a face and get a neonate to perform this kind of mimicry back.
*Argued to be a very important behaviour:
-Meltzoff built a theory around this
- Meltzoff put neonate mimicry at the heart of how people understood other people
-This innate special ability tendency to copy other people’s behaviours – known as the = Innate mimicry reflex.
*important in transmission of behaviour – we have complex cultural behaviours that we hand down from generations and this is argued to play a very important role in that* - 6PROBLEMS WITH neo-nate mimicry? X 2 XThere are a lot of way that these claims have become undermined
1) Questioned whether it is really imitations;
- As sticking tongue out can get a kid exited and neonates will stick tongue out ; so can be viewed as not being imitation
2) This neonate imitation was found in other species; engaging in imitation of facial gestures.
* monkeys also engage in this neonatal facial gestures
- So this undermines the claim that it is human unique to our complex culture as humans which was originally argued. - 7Is neonate mimicry a form of imitation?-It is a very interesting behavior – but not intimation.
-Can be argued to be more a reflexive action than anything else
X problem with mimicry is not that its a simple thing to do; but that immitation must provide insight into mental states or motivation/intentions of the person being intimated
- So instead of imitation mimicry can be defined as: “the replication of a model’s actions in the absence of any insight into why those actions are effective, or even what goal they served.“
= so basically it is a copying surface forms of action without knowing anything of the mental state/intention involved - 8Importance of goal understanding/intentions to the process of imitation Carpenter et al (1998) study....It is argued that for things to become full imitation there has to be a understanding of a goal.
Carpenter et al (1998) = looked at goal understanding and imitation.
- Looked at whether children would pay attention to whether an action was accidental or not.
Findings = child doesn’t imitate the accidently part of the test – more likely to imitate the non – accidental action (where the experimenter didn’t say woops after they did the action etc.)
= this provides some evidence that children understand intentions; as they understand what aspects of what we do are part of planed actions helpful towards the goal and what are just accidents. - 9Definitions of mimcracy:“Involves the recognition and reproduction of the observed behavior, as well as the specific actions that brought about that goal...”
= the imitator has to know the goal and the form of the behavior
**copying the goal as well as the act.
“....an imitator might replicate both the form and the goal of an observed behavior but fail to understand the affordance of the objects involved in that behavior or the link between the actions and the goal they sub serve, in effect becoming a blind imitator.”
= shows that we need to know that the person was trying to make tea – performed the actions and as a result got the tea
-However don’t need to understand how the actions relate to the goal
- Is still imitation without having insight into why the actual process of why it occurs: just have to know the link that it does occur.
*Helps to distinguish what the difference is between imitation and other types of learning*
E.G: a child blowing bubbles,
Will know what they need to do is hold this things and blow as this results in a bubble – don' need to know how. - 10RATIONAL IMITATIONRATIONAL IMITATION;
There is a box on a table with a light on it; in order to turn the light on a certain bit had to be pressed down.
• Children watched experimenter turn light on with their head – study involved then watching how the child chose to do it…
• Interested in did they try to use their head or try to use their hands – as we know can press things with their hands rather than their head or did they just copy the experimenter.
Interested in the differences between the two conditions:
1) Hands were free: means that the child doesn’t know why there using head not hands = but better just copy it as know insight to know why.
2) Hands were tied: can infer reasoning behind why the experimenter used their head.
Findings = kids more likely to intimate in the hands free condition rather than hands tied. - 11Arguments of why this result was found...Arguments of why this was?
In hands free = kids would infer there is something about turning on this light need your head seeing what the experimenter did, as if not they would of used their hands – so the children will also use their head. - 12OVER IMITAITON. Horner & Whiten (2005) ***(McGuigan et al (2011) findings in adults!• In many studies, children have been found to imitate redundant as well as useful parts of action sequences when copying
• Conversely they found apes don’t just mindlessly copy – but understand something about cause and effect – what parts of the imitation are important to the goal and copy just those parts.
• Compared to children just imitate even things that aren’t important as well
***Surprisingly adults have been found to be more likely to do it than the kids. - 13What explains this?- Humans are pre disposed to just copy due to the fact they are predisposed to be taught – as they trust adults and copy adults will just do what they do (don’t expect them to do irrelevant things)
Humans will assume (unlike apes) that when we watch people do things they will only do actions they need to do: this is the process of learning in children – not understanding why things happen just know these action make these goals so copying them. - 14What is emulation?-What the apes were doing is known as emulation
“The observer is not concerned with copying the model’s actions precisely, nor even the goal of the model, but adopts his or her own strategy (which may coincidentally take the same form as that which was observed) on the basis of the information gained from observing.”
- They are just learning about the world – how they operate the box to creatively perform their own actions.
*Emulation is kind of like regular learning in a sense – although its social because they are watching someone doing it – it’s not important than a person is doing it – just watching things happen and on basis of that we produce our own actions* - 15Call, J., & Carpenter, M. (2002) Three sources of information in social learningThey broke things down into 3 sections for it to be imitation had to cover all three sources.
1) mimcracy
2) emulation
3) goal emulation
*goal emulation isn’t important for us* - 16How do children decide who to learn Koenig and Harris (2005)Experiments shown that children are more likely to believe words or facts taught by a person who has shown themselves to be knowledgeable in the past (e.g. Koenig and Harris (2005).
- So doesn’t show that kids think all adults are always right and knowledgeable – kids will distrust certain people especially if they have kept getting things wrong. (done actions that don’t achieve the goal/or named things wrong)
* kids will even choose kid over an adult who kept getting things wrong – quite attentive to what people have said before/done before. - 17Effect of the majoirty on child immiation?-Obvious before example are extreme cases: people don’t in general make big errors in front of kids…
- Children seem to pay attention to the number of times they see an action performed: Kids will copy things the more they encounter them – but also an interesting effect of how many people choose to perform a task in a certain way.
They watch videos of people performing the task of putting ball in different coloured holes.
= the fact they’ve seen different people do it not just the same person doing the act numerous times impacted on who they imitated.
Findings =
- Both chimps and humans will always copy the majority.
- Orangatangss = was not found, they just copy whoever.
= sensible to do this as multiple people not likely to be wrong – - 18Learning Outcomes:Outcomes
- An understanding of the different component parts of imitation, and related behaviours (mimicry, emulation)
- Knowledge of some of the evidence that supports modern views of imitation
- Ability to discuss how children decide which behaviours to copy and which not to
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- Flashcards on Immitation and social learning , created by Becca Sidley on 12/04/2016.
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