By:

SINDHU MATHI SELVAN

2.3.1 Selman’s Perspective Taking

2.3.2 Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
2.3.3 Bandura’s Social Cognitive
2.3.1 SELMANS PERSPECTIVE-
TAKING
 BIOGRAPHY

• Robert Selman was born in 1942 in California.

• He is mostly known for his theories and books
developed to talk about self socialization and
perspective.
• There are not many records on Selman’s history.
• His books were published and his theories are well
known but his personal life is kept secret.
• Past work focused on the treatment of psychological
disorders of youth in day school and residential
treatment and the prevention of these disorders in
children and adolescents placed at risk.
Very young children don't understand that other people have
different feelings and experiences from their own. But this perspective-
taking ability develops over time until it is quite sophisticated
in adults. Robert Selman, a psychoanalyst, developed a five-
stage model to describe the development of perspective-taking.

Consider the following:

Holly is an 8-year old girl who likes to climb trees. She is the best tree climber in
the neighbourhood. One day while climbing a tree she falls off the bottom branch but
does not hurt herself. Her father sees her fall, and is upset. He asks her
to promise not to climb trees anymore, and Holly promises.

Later that day, Holly and her friends meet Sean. Sean's kitten is caught up in a tree
and cannot get down. Something has to be done right away or the kitten may fall.
Holly is the only one who climbs trees well enough to reach the kitten and get it down,
but she remembers her promise to her father.
If children of different ages are presented with this situation and
asked such questions as, "If Holly climbs the tree, should she
be punished?"

"Will her father understand if she climbs the tree?" "Will Sean
understand why Holly has trouble deciding what to do?" the
children will give answers relevant to their age group:

Undifferent Social Third

iated Informative
Self reflective
Party Societal
 UNDIFFERENTIATED PERSPECTIVE-
TAKING

Level 1 - Age: 3-6

Description: Children recognize that the self and others can

have different thoughts and feelings, but they frequently
confuse the two.

Response: The child predicts that Holly will save the kitten
because she does not want it to get hurt and believes that
Holly's father will feel just as she does about her climbing
the tree: "Happy, he likes kittens."
 SOCIAL INFORMATIONAL
PERSPECTIVE TALKING

Level 2 - Age: 5-9

Description: Children understand that different

perspectives may result because people have access to
different information.

Response: When asked how Holly's father will react

when he finds out that she climbed the tree, the child
responds, "If he didn't know anything about the kitten,
he would be angry. But if Holly shows him the kitten, he
might change his mind."
 SELF REFLECTIVE PERSPECTIVE
TAKING

Level 3 - Age: 7-12

Description: Children can "step in another person's shoes" and

view their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviour from the other
person's perspective. They also recognize that others can do the
same.

Response: When asked whether Holly thinks she will

be punished, the child says, "No. Holly knows that her father will
understand why she climbed the tree." This response assumes
that Holly's point of view is influenced by her father being able
to "step in her shoes" and understand why she saved the kitten.
 THIRD PARTY PERSPECTIVE
TAKING
Level 4 - Age: 10-15

Description: Children can step outside a two-person situation

and imagine how the self and other are viewed from the point of
view of a third, impartial party.

Response: When asked whether Holly should be punished, the

child says, "No, because Holly thought it was important to save
the kitten. But she also knows that her father told her not to
climb the tree. So she'd only think she shouldn't be punished if
she could get her father to understand why she had to climb the
tree." This response steps outside the immediate situation to view
both Holly's and her father's perspectives simultaneously.
 SOCIEATAL PERSPECTIVE TAKING

Level 5 - Age: 14-Adult

Description: Individuals understand that third-party

perspective-taking can be influenced by one or
more systems of larger societal values.

Response: When asked if Holly should be punished,

the individual responds, "No. The value
of human treatment of animals justifies Holly's action.
Her father's appreciation of this value will lead him not
to punish her."
 FURTHER INFORMATION

As children mature, they take more information into account.

They realize that different people can react differently to the same
situation.
They develop the ability to analyze the perspectives of several
people involved in a situation from the viewpoint of
an objective bystander, and they can even imagine how
different cultural or social values would influence the perceptions
of the bystander.
 EXAMPLE

1. When dealing with younger children in stages 2 or 3 you could often

have them respond to the emotions of a character when they are
reading book.
2. The teacher can pause periodically and have students respond to the
questions such as “ how do you think the character feels now that this
has happened to them?”
3. As children get older they mature and take different perspectives on
what knowledge they are taking in. It is job of the teacher to make sure
all children are on the appropriate level of perspective taking by giving
them the proper assignmens and reading to determine their level.
4. On any level of perspective taking it is always possible to ask the
student “what would you do in this situation?” By asking this simple
question you can always determine whether or not the students have a
true understanding of what is taking place and what perspective to take.
2.3.2 SKINNER’S OPERANT
CONDITIONING
 B.F SKINNER

Lived 1904-1990. Influential

American psychologist
considered to be one of the
founders of behaviorism
(along with Watson and
Pavlov). He identified the
principles behind operant
conditioning,and was the first to
study the behavioral effects of
punishment and reinforcement.
 OPERANT CONDITIONING

A method of learning that occurs through reinforcements

and punishments for behavior. We learn to perform
certain behaviors more often because they result in
rewards,and learn to avoid other behaviors because they
result in punishment or adverse consequences.
 Negative and positive experiences
shape our future behavior choices,
even if we don’t realize it is happening.
 Reinforcement: results that make us want
to repeat a behavior.
Studied hard?
Good grades are
positive reinforcement.
Didn’t study?
Bad grades are
positive
punishment.

Punishment: results that make us NOT want to

repeat a behavior again.
 THE SKINNER BOX

Skinner’s operant conditioning chamber (also called a

Skinner Box) was designed to teach rats how to push a
lever.This behavior is not natural to rats, so operant
conditioning with positive and negative reinforcement
were performed in order to teach the behavior.

Positive Reinforcement:
A rat was awarded with food
when he pressed the lever.
Negative Reinforcement:
A rat was able to turn off
electric shocks produced by
the floor by pressing the lever.
 POSITIVE
REINFORCEMENT

• Initially,the rat’s behavior

was random. It accidentally
tripped the lever and a
food pellet was released.
• The rat soon discovered
that intentionally pressing
the lever resulted in a
reward.
• The consequence of
performing the behavior
(lever press) was desirable,
ensuring that the rat
would repeat the action.
 NEGATIVE
REINFORCEMENT

• An unpleasant electric
current ran through the
floor of the rat’s cage.
• Initially, accidental lever
pushing turned off the
electric current.
• The consequence of
avoiding something painful
(removal of an unpleasant
stimulus) ensured that the
rat continued to push
the lever.
 Positive Reinforcement Positive Punishment
Reinforcement = Do it again! Punishment = Don’t do it again!
Positive = Adding something (good) Positive = Adding something (bad)

Negative Reinforcement Negative Punishment

Reinforcement = Do it again! Punishment = Don’t do it again!
Negative = Taking something (bad) away Negative = Taking something (good) away
 POSITIVE

Positive punishment and reinforcement are easier to remember.

Positive does not mean“good” - it means something is added
to your environment.
 NEGATIVE

Negative punishment and reinforcement are more

challenging to understand because the term “negative
reinforcement” is used outside of Psychology to mean the
opposite of “positive reinforcement.”

In Psychology,“negative” does not mean “bad”: it means

something is removed from your environment. If something
good is removed, it will make you sad and cause you to not
want to repeat the behavior that led to its removal. If
something bad is removed, it will make you happy, causing
you to want to repeat the behavior.
2.3.3 BANDURA’S SOCIAL
COGNITIVE
 BIOGRAPHY
• Albert Bandura was born in Alberta,
Canada 1925.
• Interested in behaviorist learning theories.
• During high school summer he worked in the
Alaskan Yukon which he credits for his
interests, psychopathology.
• Completed Masters and Ph.D. in three years.
• Professor at Stanford University since 1953.
• Author of over 300 scholarly publications.
 His early work on
learning was grounded
in the behavioral
principles of
reinforcement and
punishment, but he
added a focus on  Social Cognitive Theory
learning from
observing others.
 This was labeled Social
Learning Theory.
Later on, Bandura focused
on cognitive factors such as
beliefs, self-perceptions,
and expectations, his
theory is now called Social
Cognitive Theory.
expands social learning
theory to include
cognitive factors.
 THINK !!!
 Does the violence that children observe on
television, movies, and video games lead
them to behave aggressively?

 This is a hot question today, but it was also of

great interest years ago when Bandura led an
experiment to determine how kids learn
aggression through observation.
 In a famous and influential experiment known as
the Bobo doll experiment, Albert Bandura and
his colleagues were able to demonstrate one of
the ways in which children learn aggression.


The experiment involved exposing children to
two different adult models; an aggressive model
and a non-aggressive one.

After witnessing the adult's behavior, the
children would then be placed in a room without
the model and were observed to see if they
would imitate the behavior they had witnessed
earlier.
Bobo doll experiment:
• Adults were recorded being
aggressive to bobo dolls.
• Children were shown the
video and then allow to play
in a room full of toys.
• Children were aggressive to
the bobo doll just as the
adults were in the video
(Cherry, 2014).
• Through his research,
Bandura observed that
components of learning occur
though observation and
modeling behaviors.
• This concept led to the
theoretical framework of the
social cognitive learning
theory (Famous People Info,
2011).
 RESULTS

Children exposed to the violent model tended to imitate the exact

behavior they had observed when the adult was no longer present.
Bandura and his colleagues had also predicted that children in the non-
aggressive group would behave less aggressively than those in the control
group.

The researchers were also correct in their prediction that boys would behave
more aggressively than girls. Boys engaged in more than twice as many acts
of aggression than the girls.
 ASSUMPTIONS OF SOCIAL COGNITIVE
THEORY
• Learning occurs by observing
others and modeling.
• Internal processes and cognition
of observed behavior may or may
not lead to a learned behavior (
learning performance distinction).
• Behavior is goal directed- goals are
set and behavior is directed to
accomplishing the goal (motivation
driven) .
• Behavior is eventually self-
regulated.
• Punishment and reinforcement
have indirect effects on the
learning process (Hurst, 2014).
 RECIPROCAL CAUSATION MODEL ENVIRONMENT
LEARNING BEHAVIOR PERSON

Environmental
factors: Social
Environment models
Instruction
Feedback
Learning
Personal
factors:
Behavior Person (cognitive)
Goals Sense of
Behaviors: Process of self-regulation Goal
efficacy
progress Motivations Learning
Attributions
(Zimmerman, 1989).
 TYPES OF LEARNING

• Enactive Learning-
learning by doing and
is reinforced by the
consequences of
actions/outcomes.

• Vicarious Learning-
learning through
observation not
performance (Hurst,
2014).
 THE LEARNING PROCESS

• Attention- Learning by being attentive. Anything that distracts the

attention will going to have a negative effect on learning. If the
situation is far likely to the interest, the more the learner dedicate
his full attention to learn.
• Retention- The ability to store information is also important part of
the learning process. This can be affected by a number of factors,
but the ability to pull up information later and act on its vital
observation.
• Reproduction-Once person pays attention and able to retain the
information, it is time to actually perform the behavior you
observed. Further practice of the learned behavior leads to
improvement and skill advancement.
• Motivation-In order to be successful, you have to be motivated to
learn being aware of it outcome. Reinforcement and punishment
play an important role in motivation.
 SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY

• Models can be real

people (teachers,
coaches etc.)
• Models can also come
from media: books,
TV, Magazines
(symbolic)
• Models can influence
behavior: positively
or negatively (Schunk,
2012).
 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODELS

Both real and

symbolic, have:
• Have prestige and
power
• Models are
competent
• Perform tasks
well that others
would like to be
able to do (Hurst,
2014).
1. Direct Reinforcement - occurs when you perform a certain
behaviour and are rewarded (positive reinforcement), or it
leads to the removal or avoidance of something unpleasant
(negative reinforcement).
2. Vicarious Reinforcement – the observer may simply see
others reinforced for a particular behavior and then increase
his or her production of that behavior.
3. Self-Reinforcement – or controlling your own
reinforcers.

This reinforcement is important for both students
and teachers.

We want our students to improve not because it leads to
external rewards, but because the students value and enjoy
their growing competence.
 WEAKNESS OF THEORY

• The theory is loosely structured.

• Doesn’t take emotional responses into
account.
• Ignores biological differences between
individuals –genetic factors
• Assumes that all behavior is a result of
modeling, not genetics, illness, or other
influences (Flamand, 2014).
THANK YOU