Observational learning is learning that occurs by observe the behavior of others. It is a form of social learning that takes various forms, based on various processes. We can summarize the basic processes by dividing them into two groups: those that support learning and those that support execution.
The basic processes in observational learning are:
- Attention and discrimination: It is necessary for the observer to pay attention to the behavior carried out by the subject and for the observer to discriminate the most relevant aspects of said behavior. Imitation is not an exact repetition of the model behavior. This attentional process is highly influenced by three types of variables: the characteristics of the model, the characteristics of the observer and the stimulus conditions. The characteristics of the model that positively influence the observer are that the sex of the model is the same and the age is similar; the prestige, status and social power of the model; his competence and experience in the behavior he performs and the emotional treatment that the model establishes with the observer. The characteristics of the observer that positively influence observational learning are: apart from age and sex, the intelligence level of the observing subject, their previous education or learning history and their affective or emotional characteristics. The stimulating characteristics that favor imitation are that the relevant aspects of the model’s behavior are easily discriminable and that the model’s behavior is exposed in a real way, through images or verbal description.
It constitutes a very suitable model for human learning in which many difficulties typical of classical and operant conditioning are avoided. There is no need to repeat training trials over and over again. It is also suitable for behaviors that are punished, without the need for the subjects to receive the punishment themselves. Learning by the observational model is called “modeling” (not to be confused with sapina).
Animal Cognition
One of the topics that are typical of the psychology of learning today is animal cognition. Animal cognition studies are the study of cognitive processes in animals. It is a psychology of learning and its methodology uses, at least in the experimental process, the approach of experimental analysis of behavior. Studies of animal cognition are understood as the study of internal processes, inferred from the study of behavior, which refer to thought processes.
The inference is based on the fact that thought processes can explain behaviors that would never be explained by external stimuli. This does not imply the study of consciousness. We must distinguish between mental processes that explain our behavior or animal behaviors (which are inferred processes) and the study of consciousness (which is something directly observable, although only privately) since they refer to different things.
Thus, the cognition It is understood as an internal process that explains behavior, without going into whether it is conscious or not; a neurological representation (mental record or image) that can explain behavior that could not be explained by external stimuli alone. So what needs to be investigated is how these neurological representations are formed; What information they represent, what the mechanism that stores them is like, and how they subsequently guide behavior. Here is the whole panorama of the psychology of learning animal cognition.
The considered cognitive processes, but the basic learning processes, which are intended to be given a cognitive conceptualization: the basic learning processes are not stimulus-response associations, but mental representations that represent those associations of stimuli and responses, whether EE or ER. Basic learning is understood as learning relationships and, therefore, the formation of representations of the stimuli is necessary. The study of cognition has as its direct objective the knowledge of animal behavior, but through this many other interesting purposes are achieved. For example, knowing the evolution that has led to human cognition.
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