The approaches of behaviorists such as John Watson and B. F. Skinner were successful in twentieth-century psychology for at least two reasons:

• They do a good job of explaining how some behaviors, such as emotional responses and social behaviors, can be learned.
• They had, as a primary goal, the development of practical applications of research results.

In fact, these approaches eventually gave rise to a number of successful applications, such as effective treatments for some mental disorders. Nonetheless, the claim that there are no mental causes of behavior (or that, if there are, they can safely be ignored) severely limited the explanatory power of behavioristic theories. This limitation became evident with the discovery of two types of learning that were difficult to understand without postulating mental factors: latent learning and observational learning.

Latent Learning

Let's say that you have just moved to a new part of town and. on your first night there, spend some time driving around. You see a grocery story at the closest major intersection to your house, a hospital about a mile to the east of your house, a post office two blocks to the west of your house, and a gas station just around the corner. The next morning, you wake up feeling very hungry and drive straight to the grocery store in order to buy some food. It seems obvious that, on your casual drive around your neighborhood, you learned something that allowed you to drive to the grocery store, and that you did this without being reinforced for performing any of the relevant responses. How could this have happened? A behaviorist in the mold of Watson or Skinner would have a difficult time explaining this, at least to the satisfaction of others.

Edward C. Tolman (1886-1959), on the other hand, would have explained what happened by stating that, during your drive the night before, you formed a mental structure that he called a cognitive map. According to Tolman (1948), a cognitive map is a mental representation of an area that indicates routes, paths, and spatial[∂] relationships. Individuals learn cognitive maps simply by exploring an area. The existence of this mental cause of behavior is demonstrated when one is motivated to travel to a location in the cognitive map. In our example, the motivation was hunger, which led you to drive to the grocery store. This type of learning is called latent learning — latent means hidden or concealed — because one has learned something that is not seen until there is a need to express in behavior what has been learned.

Latent learning first was described in a paper by Blodgett (1929), who performed research on maze learning in rats. One group of rats received a typical instrumental-learning (operant-conditioning) procedure. Blodgett put food in the maze's goal box, shown on the right side of Figure 1, and each day placed the rats, one at a time, in the maze's start box, shown on the left side of Figure 1. In operant-conditioning terms, the rats received positive reinforcement (food) when they took the correct path to the goal box. Over a seven-day period, the average number of errors decreased rapidly as the rats learned the correct path.

Figure 1. Maze used in Blodgett's study of latent learning in rats

For a second group of rats, Blodgett (1929) used the same procedure except that, for the first six days, he placed nothing in the maze's goal box. The rats in this group, therefore, received no reinforcement when they eventually found the goal box. On the seventh day, Blodgett placed food in the goal box in order to motivate the rats to quickly run the correct path. He found that these rats learned the correct path during the first six days with no reinforcement. In Tolman's (1948) words, each had developed a cognitive map of the maze.

The demonstration of latent learning in this and other studies showed that operant responses may be learned without reinforcement. In order to do so, individuals must be attending to, thinking about, and remembering the stimuli to which they are exposed — in short, mental factors are essential to latent learning. The maze stimuli serve as discriminative stimuli that, in conjunction with a rat's memory of the maze's configuration (its cognitive map of the maze), result in their performing the correct operant responses when reinforcement finally is introduced. The reinforcement, however, serves only to motivate: it is not needed for learning.

Latent learning demonstrates that, under some conditions, reinforcement is necessary only for motivating individuals to show what they have learned: it is not necessary for the actual learning of the correct responses. In other words, latent learning demonstrates that cognitive processes are essential for at least some kinds of learning.

Observational Learning

Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961) investigated, in preschool children, the learning of physically and verbally aggressive behaviors (the operant responses) without reinforcement. Children learned these operant responses simply by observing an adult (referred to as the model) who expressed either aggressive or nonaggressive behaviors towards a Bobo doll — an inflatable plastic clown similar in height to the children that, when hit, falls over and bounces back to an upright position (watch a video here). The most important part of the study involved observing children in each of the following four groups:

Group 1: Watched a male acting aggressively (6 boys and 6 girls).
Group 2: Watched a female acting aggressively (6 boys and 6 girls).
Group 3: Watched a male acting nonaggressively (6 boys and 6 girls).
Group 4: Watched a female acting nonaggressively (6 boys and 6 girls).

The researchers predicted that children in Groups 1 and 2, when compared to those in Groups 3 and 4, would be more likely to act aggressively (both physically and verbally) towards the doll. In addition, they predicted that, when the adult model was of the same sex as the child, that child would be more likely to imitate the model's behaviors than would a child of the opposite sex. Because most children already knew from television commercials how Bobo dolls were supposed to be punched,

the model exhibited distinctive aggressive acts which were to be scored as imitative responses. The model laid the Bobo doll on its side, sat on it and punched it repeatedly in the nose. The model then raised the Bobo doll, picked up the mallet and struck the doll on the head. Following the mallet aggression, the model tossed the doll up in the air aggressively and kicked it about the room. This sequence of physically aggressive acts was repeated approximately three times, interspersed with verbally aggressive responses such as, "Sock him in the nose…," "Hit him down...," "Throw him in the air…," "Kick him…," "Pow…". (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961, p. 576)

Imitative physical aggression was scored when the children later laid the doll on its side, sat on it, and punched it on the nose; raised the doll and hit it on the head with the mallet; or tossed the doll in the air and kicked it around the room. Imitative verbal aggression was scored when the children later made the same comments that had been made by the model. Pictures of a female model, a boy, and a girl performing physically aggressive behaviors are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. An adult model and two children expressing aggressive behavior towards Bobo dolls (the picture appears at this link)

The aggression scores presented in Table 1 are averages of the physically imitative and verbally imitative scores found in Table 1 of Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961). The results confirm the researchers' predictions. Overall, boys exhibited more imitative aggression than did girls (7.25 versus 3.90), which is consistent with gender differences typically found for average levels of physical and verbal aggression. Furthermore, boys were over twice as likely to imitate a male model who had performed physically and verbally aggressive behaviors than a female model who did the same (agression scores of 19.25 versus 8.35, respectively). Girls, on the other hand, were about twice as likely to imitate a female model who had performed physically and verbally aggressive behaviors than a male model who did the same (aggression scores of 9.60 versus 4.60, respectively). Lastly, when the models did not perform aggressive behaviors, the children showed few aggressive behaviors.

Table 1. The average aggression scores of boys and girls in Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961)

The type of learning exhibited by these children is called observational learning because acquired changes in behavior occur after observing the behavior of others. Bandura and his colleagues concluded that the existence of observational learning shows that operant responses may be developed without reinforcement: "subjects expressed their aggression in ways that clearly resembled the novel patterns exhibited by [the] models" (p. 580).

In other publications, Bandura and his colleagues developed a theory to explain this type of learning. They stated that the acquisition of a response depends on cognitive processes that lead to the development of a cognitive structure — a mental representation of the response (more simply referred to as knowledge). Performance of the response, on the other hand, depends on:

• the degree of similarity of the immediate situation to the situation in which the mental representation was developed;
• the individual's level of motivation to express the response in that situation. The motivation is provided by stimuli such as reinforcements.

Children, of course, learn many of their behaviors by watching how others behave, especially the behaviors of authority figures, such as parents and older children. For example, when my daughter first was learning to speak, she started using a curse word (one that started with an F) whenever she heard our car's horn blare because, on many occasions, she had heard her mother use the same word after honking the horn at other drivers. Parents are usually very important models of behavior to their children, especially same-sex parents.

Vicarious Conditioning

An important type of observational learning is vicarious conditioning— a type of learning in which the strengthening (or weakening) of an operant response occurs by observing whether a model is reinforced (or punished) for producing that response. By watching what happens to the model, observers develop an expectation about the likely consequence of performing that same operant response in similar situations, without ever having been reinforced or punished themselves. For example, if the models in the Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961) study had been punished for acting aggressively, the children should have developed an expectation that punishment would follow aggressive behavior, and should have been less likely to imitate that aggressive behavior later. The opposite should have happened if the models had been reinforced for acting aggaressively.

To test this hypothesis, Bandura (1965) filmed adult models acting aggressively towards a Bobo doll. In the film, the model ordered the doll to move, stared at it for a moment in an aggressive manner, and then attacked it:

First, the model laid the Bobo doll on its side, sat on it, and punched it in the nose while remarking, “Pow, right in the nose, boom, boom.” The model then raised the doll and pummeled it on the head with a mallet. Each response was accompanied by the verbalization, “Sockeroo stay down.” Following the mallet aggression, the model kicked the doll about the room, and these responses were interspersed with the comment, “Fly away.” Finally, the model threw rubber balls at the Bobo doll, each stroke punctuated with “Bang.” This sequence of physically and verbally aggressive behavior was repeated twice. (pp. 590-591)

Bandura showed these films to preschool children. He found that most of the children learned the aggressive behaviors, but that their performance of these behaviors was affected by what happened to the model after he or she had acted aggressively. One group of children observed the model's aggressive behaviors being reinforced with praise and treats. A second group of children observed the model's aggressive behaviors being punished with scolding and spanking. As predicted, children in the first group were much more likely to imitate the model's aggressive behaviors than were children in the second group.

In summary, latent learning and observational learning require cognitive processes to explain the acquisition and performance of learned behaviors. Because behavioristic approaches did not allow for the causal influence of mental factors, these approaches were unable to offer adequate explanations of latent and observational learning. Furthermore, other research, such as that described in Section 5-12 on biological factors affecting learning, showed that behavioristic approaches were limited in additional ways. Thus, beginning around 1960, behaviorism increasingly became overshadowed by cognitive approaches in experimental psychology. In the remainder of Section 6, you will learn about cognitive approaches to understanding learning and memory.

Study Questions for Section 6-1

1. How would you define "latent learning" in your own words?
2. What is an example of latent learning in your own life?
3. What is a "cognitive map"?
4. What led Tolman (1948) to develop the concept of "cognitive maps"?
5. What did Blodgett (1929) find in his study of latent learning?
6. In latent learning, what is reinforcement important for?
7. How would you define "observational learning" in your own words?
8. What is an example of observational learning in your own life?
9. How is observational learning similar to and different from latent learning?
10. What was the main research question in the study by Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961)?
11. In that study, when were girls most likely to imitate the aggressive behavior of a model? When were boys most likely to do the same?
12. Why did Bandura and his colleagues distinguish between "acquisition" and "performance" of a learned response?
13. According to Bandura and his colleagues, when is an individual most likely to imitate (perform) an observed behavior?
14. How would you define "vicarious conditioning" in your own words?
15. What is an example of vicarious conditioning in your own life?
16. How is the concept of "expectation" important in vicarious conditioning?
17. How is vicarious conditioning similar to and different from observational learning?
18. What happened to behaviorism in experimental psychology after about 1960?

Go to Quiz 6-1 questions

Go to Readings Section 6-2