Social Learning Theory

Psychology Discussion Questions

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Psychology Discussion Questions

Child Behavioral Issues

According to the classical conditioning theory, unconditioned stimulus (US) is one that initiates a response in a natural, unconditional, and automatic manner. In other words, unconditioned response elicits a reflex response. A conditioned stimulus (CS) is an inducement that elicits a non-reflex response. It is also described an alternative stimulus which initiates a response that is similar to that of an unconditioned stimulus. In other words, through a conditioned stimulus, an organism reacts to a stimulus based on the fact that stimulus is related to another. During its initial stages, conditioned stimulus is usually neutral and cannot prompt a response unless it happens repeatedly. This means that the response to a conditioned stimuli is learned over a certain time period. A conditioned response is a response that is learned from a stimulus that was previously neutral. In other words, a conditioned response is a response to a conditioned stimuli (Filingeri, 2011).

For the child with behavioral issues, the unconditioned stimulus is when the child does not get what they want for the first time. The conditioned stimulus is when the child does not get what they want over and over again. The conditioned stimuli is when the child throws a tantrum to include outburst of crying, and throwing objects. There are a number of ways through which the child can be helped to extinguish or replace the current CR. One way is for the parents to avoid circumstances which are likely to elicit tantrums. If the child pleads for treats or toys during shopping, it is advisable to avoid places with these inducements. If the child causes trouble when in a restaurant, it is prudent to select places where they offer quick service to avoid waiting for too long. The child’s CR can also be extinguished if the parent praises him/her when he/she behaves well, allow him/her to make choices, and establish a routine and be consistent.

Instrumental Conditioning

An instance in therapy that might call for the use of punishment is when a child shows a destructive behavior such as throwing things, tantrums, hitting or screaming. Punishment may not be the first thing to think especially when the child shows this kind of behavior for the first time. If the behavior has never been shown again in the past, the best thing to do would be to talk to the child and tell them that this is wrong and that he/she should stop. However, the child should be punished if he/she repeats this behavior. One of the reasons why a child may display destructive behavior, he/she may be seeking attention from their caregiver. Seeking attention is not bad in itself but the child should be made to understand that being violent or destructive is not the best way to seek attention.

Punishment can be either positive or negative. According to the principles of beneficence, the benefits, costs, and risks of treatment must be balanced. Non-maleficence means that the causation of harm must be avoided during treatment (Jahn, 2011). Thus, while administering punishment to the child who demonstrates destructive behavior, the type of punishment must not be harmful to him/her. For the example described above, the child’s behavior can be reversed using negative punishment (withdrawing something that is pleasant to him/her) or positive punishment (for example spanking). Spanking may not work in this case since it may cause harm, thus does not meet the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence. If for instance, the child throws away his spoon, fork, and Sippy-cup, he/she can be punished by taking away his/her food. As the food is taken away, the parent caregiver can tell the child “you will eat if you stop throwing.” This way, the child will realize that throwing things actually resulted not in the attention he/she wanted but something negative.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is described as the behavior which ensues when an individual continuously endures a painful experience from which he/she is not able to escape or unable to avoid. After such experiences, the individual finds it hard to learn to escape, accept, or avoid the aversive stimuli in new contexts where there is a likelihood that such behavior may be effective. In short, it means that the individual has learned that he/she is helpless. Thus, whenever an aversive stimuli is present, the affected individual is unlikely to respond positively because he/she has already given up trying. This is irrespective of the possibility that some circumstances may offer a technique that can be used by the individual to get relief from the stimuli. In summary, learned helplessness makes an individual belief that there is nothing that can be done about a situation that he/she is in. There is a strong belief that no one can help him/her be relieved of the discomfort or pain (Bargai, Ben-Shakhar, & Shalev, 2007).

Learned helpless can lead to depression. Individuals who suffer from learned helplessness are likely to develop low self-esteem because they feel that others can actually solve a problem that they have failed to solve. An individual is highly likely to suffer depression if he/she has a high desire for something but realizes that it is improbable for him/her to achieve it. In such a situation, the person does not have any expectation that anything within his/her ability can be done to change the result, thus depression results.

An individual presenting depression associated with learning depression can be helped by altering the prospect of the outcome. This is done by changing the situation by raising the likelihood of the anticipated events while reducing the likelihood of the undesired ones. Such an individual can also be helped by decreasing the desire for the favored outcome. This can be achieved by either decreasing the pessimism of occurrences which cannot be controlled by the individual or by reducing the attractiveness of the events which have an extremely low likelihood of happening.

Motivation

Intrinsic motivation happens when an individual engages in a behavior for the reason that he/she will get a personal reward. This means that an individual undertakes an activity not because he/she is expecting an external reward but for its own sake. Fundamentally, the action itself is its own reward (Deci, 2012). When an adolescent cleans his/her room because he/she likes being tidy as opposed to being punished is an example of intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is when a person engages in an activity or behaves in a particular way so as to get a reward or to avoid being punished. This means that intrinsic motivation involves participating in an action or behavior not because it is satisfying or enjoyable, but because it will help one avoid something nasty or get something in return (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 2000). An example of an extrinsic motivation is when a sportsperson participates in a sport activity so as to earn an award. A teenager cleaning his/her room to avoid being scolded by his/her parents is another good example.

Intrinsic motivation seems to be the better since it originates from within the person. An individual with intrinsic motivation is likely to continue doing an activity or behaving in a certain way since they do not expect a reward in the end. Extrinsic motivation is inferior because an individual is motivated by an external reward. Once the reward is removed, the individual would abandon the behavior or withdraw his/her participation.

In all the different theories of learning that we have read about, motivation plays a key role. Most of the learning theories make use of extrinsic motivation, where behaviors are encouraged by offering rewards or punishing. This class is an example of my learning experiences where the main drive is to score a good grade in the end, which is an extrinsic motivation.

Disruption in Memory

There are two key commonly known factors which affect memory are motivation and attention. Motivation affects memory recall in the sense that when an individual is given and incentive to recall given information, he/she will recall that information more readily and unmistakably than in the case when there is no incentive. Attention is another factor that has been found to profoundly affect memory recall. Research has demonstrated that this factor mostly affects recall during the encoding stage. Message encoding is weakened when the person receiving the message is focusing attention on another task. Thus, it will be hard for the individual to recall the information he/she was receiving when he/she was focused on another task.

Factors contributing to disruption of memory can be easily seen in a client seeking counselling. A client who seems to remember incentivized things as opposed to those without incentives are likely to suffer from memory disruption. The factor at play in such a case is motivation. A client who seem not to recall things which have been discussed during a therapy session is likely to be suffering from memory disruption caused by lack of attention. Clients with memory disruption can be helped by encouraging them to concentrate and keep focus on the main source of information avoid disruptions as much as possible. Clients with the problem of having to be motivated so as to remember given information can be helped by removing the motivator and encouraging them to recall without having to be given incentives. This will help them develop a habit of remembering information even when they do not expect to be rewarded. Such a client should be helped by making sure that the reward factor is absent because this is what makes their memory biased and only remembering things for which they are rewarded and forgetting everything else.

Learning Styles

Visualizer-verbalizer learners learn by either visualizing or verbalizing. More specifically, visualizer learners learn through visualization or seeing while verbalizer learners lean by verbalizing, reading or hearing. In this case, learners are likely to make maximum use of their ability if they understand what type of learner they are. Understanding oneself makes it easy to select the tools which are most suitable for one’s learning style, thus the learning process is made easier. Kolb’s theory of learning (popularly known as experiential learning) centers on the internal learning processes of the learner which are as a result of experience. According to Kolb, learning is an endless process that can be broken into four stages (Kolb, 2014). The four stages are: experience, reflection, conceptualization, and testing or experimentation of what has been learned. Kolb further suggested the four styles of learning namely diverging, assimilating, converging, and accommodating. Under diverging learning style, a learner views situations from various points of view, reflects and usually works with others to arrive at a solution.

Assimilating learning style makes use of reflections to come up with solutions while converging style of learning explores various ideas and thoughts to find a solution to an issue. Under the accommodating learning style, there is a more hands-on and active learning approach which focuses on trial and error to get a solution for a given problem. Stenberg’s theory of learning applies a cognitive method to learning and intelligence. Here, three components contribute to the learning process. These include analytical, practical, and creative skills from which individuals attain and make use of knowledge (Zizek, Garz, & Nowak, 2015). Essentially, Stenberg suggests that intelligence can be viewed on an individual’s ability to adjust to the fluctuating situations. He opposed intelligence measures such as IQ tests for the simple reason that they do not measure all the three components of learning.

References Bargai, N., Ben-Shakhar, G., & Shalev, A. Y. (2007). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Depression in Battered Women: The Mediating Role of Learned Helplessness. Journal of Family Violence Volume:22 Issue:5 , 267-275. Deci, E. L. (2012). Intrinsic Motivation. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media. Filingeri, V. (2011). Comprehensive Review of Psychology. First Edition Design Pub. Jahn, W. T. (2011). The 4 basic ethical principles that apply to forensic activities are respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. J Chiropr Med. 10(3), 225–226. doi: 10.1016/j.jcm.2011.08.004. Kolb, D. A. (2014). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: FT Press. Sansone, C., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. Zizek, B., Garz, D., & Nowak, E. (2015). Kohlberg Revisited. Berlin, Germany: Springer.