Observational Learning - Observational Learning and Effects On Children

Observational Learning and Effects On Children

There has been much debate in regards to whether or not children are more prone to learn more from the same sex model or opposite sex model. A study examined this hypothesis, whereby 118 boys and girls in grades three and four were examined by cue cards. The cue cards displayed tools, household articles, and game. The child and/ or participant were tested by the same sex; and based on their response,the child was given a score which classified he or she into one of four conditions; masculine boy, feminine boy, masculine girl, feminine girl. Participants were then brought into a spare room, to watch a film involving an adult male and an adult female. After watching the film, the participants were asked to recall the adult models’ behaviour, which was then recorded by a checklist. The research found that the original hypothesis was supported. Results showed that boys demonstrated a stronger tendency to recall more of the male models behaviour, whereas girls recalled an equal amount of each adult’s behavior. The author found that children might learn more from a male model as oppose to a female model because males are generally perceived as possessing a higher social powers. Therefore, while boys are not only being encouraged and rewarded for imitating a man role, they also view men as more powerful and therefore are highly motivated to learn from male models.

Read more about this topic:  Observational Learning

Famous quotes containing the words learning, effects and/or children:

    Go, throng each other’s drawing-rooms,
    Ye idols of a petty clique:
    Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
    And make your penny-trumpets squeak:
    Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
    Of learning from a noble time,
    And oil each other’s little heads
    With mutual Flattery’s golden slime.
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    What will our children remember of us, ten, fifteen years from now? The mobile we bought or didn’t buy? Or the tone in our voices, the look in our eyes, the enthusiasm for life—and for them—that we felt? They, and we, will remember the spirit of things, not the letter. Those memories will go so deep that no one could measure it, capture it, bronze it, or put it in a scrapbook.
    Sonia Taitz (20th century)