Albert Bandura's Research and Social Learning Theory

<p>Recently, I came across a rather interesting study by Albert Bandura and his theory of social learning.</p>
<p>Learning can happen when we quietly study textbooks, play the guitar, or use a language learning app. However, this is just one way to acquire knowledge and skills. Another way of learning requires interaction with people who know and can do more than we do.</p>
<p>One of the main theories of social learning is quite simple and well-known to young parents: children (just like adults) can learn not only from their own experiences but also by observing others.</p>
<p>The most famous experiment by Bandura is called the “Bobo Doll Experiment.” In this experiment, children were divided into two groups:</p>
<ul>
<li>Children in the first group watched adults who were beating up a doll.</li>
<li>The second group saw adults playing without aggression.</li>
</ul>
<p>When the children were later offered to play, they copied the behavior they had observed.</p>
<p>All of this generated several thoughts for me:</p>
<ol>
<li>How safe are cartoons/games, etc., with aggressive, unpunished behavior?</li>
<li>What we are doing right in our online “nerds” club <a href="https://t.me/+OWGqa8ryXRtlODEy">https://t.me/+OWGqa8ryXRtlODEy</a>: the value is that we not only watch lectures but also discuss them together, hear different viewpoints, and see practical applications in the lives of different people.</li>
<li>It seems that the current process of training neural networks does not include “social learning.” I constantly ponder how to change AI from the current format of training-testing-application to a format of continuous learning-application: so that data comes from the external world on a constant basis (including from other AIs) and fine-tunes the neural network.</li>
</ol>
<p>Sources:<br />Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control by Albert Bandura<br />Principles of Behavior Modification by Albert Bandura</p>