Child Development

See also: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT; PIAGET, JEAN

Bibliography
Baillargeon, Renée. ‘‘The Object Concept Revisited: New Direc-
tions in the Investigation of Infants’ Physical Knowledge.’’ In
C. E. Granrud ed., Visual Perception and Cognition in Infancy.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993.
Piaget, Jean. The Construction of Reality in the Child, translated by
Margaret Cook. New York: Basic, 1954.
Andréa Aguiar

OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

Observational learning is a powerful means of social
learning. It principally occurs through the cognitive
processing of information displayed by models. The
information can be conveyed verbally, textually, and
auditorially, and through actions either by live or
symbolic models such as television, movies, and the
Internet. Regardless of the medium used to present
the modeled activities, the same psychological pro-
cesses underlie observational learning. These include
attention and memory processes directed to establish

a conceptual representation of the modeled activity.

This representation guides the enactment of observa-

tionally learned patterns of conduct. Whether the

learned patterns will be performed or not depends on

incentive structures and observers’ actual and per-

ceived competence to enact the modeled perfor-

mances. Unlike learning by doing, observational

learning does not require enactment of the modeling

activities during learning. The complexity of the

learning, however, is restricted by the cognitive com-

petence and enactment skills of the learner.

See also: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Bibliography

Bandura, Albert. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social

Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986.

Schunk, Dale H. ‘‘Peer Modeling.’’ In Keith Topping and Stewart

Ehly eds., Peer-Assisted Learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erl-

baum, 1998.

Kay Bussey

ONLY CHILDREN

See: BIRTH ORDER AND SPACING

290 OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING