Vicarious acquisition of a simple concept with experimenter as model

Modeling: Research with Implications for Special Education

“…Various types of conceptual behaviors (e.g., using grammatical rules, clustering objects, affirming equivalence among phenomena) were easily acquired by children who observed demonstrations of the desired response strategy (Kobasigawa, 1970;Malouf & Dodd, 1972;Rosenthal, Alford, & Rasp, 1972;Rosenthal, Moore, Dorfman, & Nelson, 1971;Ryan & Kobasigawa, 1971;. Effective ways of seeking information have likewise been taught through social modeling (LaFieur & Johnson, 1972;Lamal, 1971;Rosenthal, Zimmerman, & Durning, 1970).…”

Memory Structures and Learning Outcomes

“…Since that distinction is not made in the studies themselves, however, they are cited here rather than in the following section. Rosenthal, Moore, Dorfman, and Nelson (1971) studied young children's learning of a concept (a triangular arrangement of discs on a Chinese-checkerboard) and its transfer to a situation involving novel stimulus arrangements. Besides demonstration of the classifying rule, verbal rule statements were included as an added variable.…”

Separate Model versus Experimenter as Model in Vicarious Concept Attainment

“…No extrinsic incentives were ever Offered, nor were praise or feedback administered to the child's (or the model's) ongoing responses. Aside from the features specified above, the running procedure was the same as for the model no rule, and control, conditions of the previous study (11) , which described in greater detail the procedures, scoring criteria, and the sequence and manner of presenting the task material.…”

“…However, under the school-like conditions of task, setting, and adult activity of present concern, it was assumed that whether the experimenter serves as his own model (E -Mdesign) , or uses another person to execute modeling demonstrations (E + M design) , essentially similar results should occur. Although this inference has guided the use of E -M designs in already-completed social learning research on rule-governed conceptual behavior (11,13) , the concordance of results from E -M and E + M design formats has never before been demonstrated under precisely comparable experimental conditions. Such a demonstration, reported in this paper, is both theoretically and pragmatically necessary.…”

“…Further, if the alternative fOrmats did generate empirically indistinguishable results, then the less costly, E -M, design could be appropriatel selected both for a range of research purposes, and for many instances utilizing observational learning techniques in actual classroom teaching. Accordingl a concept-formation task which before had been studi in the E -M format with middle class first grade Ss (11), was in the present experiment given in both modeling formats to a lower socioeconomic sample. It was hypothesized that each format variation would surpass the control group in concept-attainment and transfer, but that the two modeling formats would no differ in effectiveness.…”