Psychology

One of the most important aspects of growing up surrounded by friends and siblings is learning how to do new things from each other. As a child I was always learning new skills, or developing new interests simply by observing my friends or my sisters and brothers doing those things. Learning for me was a group process, I played with my friends, and I learned with my friends. This is specifically true in regards to my best friend as a child, whom I will call Tom. Tom was curious and mischievous and he was always developing new interests and skills. I just went along for the ride a lot of the time.

Tom and I became friends when we were in preschool. He was the first person I met, on my first day of preschool. He walked up to me and invited me to play a game with him, and I said yes. I hadnt played the game before but, he and the other children taught me how to play (I think it was Memory) and we have been fast friends ever since. He was (and is) bright, funny, curious about everything, and most of all Tom was a leader.

Because Tom and I grew up together there are many things that we either learned together, or we learned from each other. One of the main skills that I learned from Tom was chess. Tom had been playing chess since he was old enough to sit at a chess table. He had learned from his father and I would often sit over at their house on the front porch on summer evenings and watch Tom play chess with his father. At first, I found it boring but, eventually I became intrigued by the game. I basically learned how to play chess by watching Tom and his father playing the game. By the time I played my first game of chess against Tom at age 10, I had a basic understanding of the game, and understood the basic chess moves simply through observing the game being played.  Tom taught me the finer points of chess over time, and eventually as high school students we both ended up joining the chess club. This knowledge of logic and strategy is something that will serve me well throughout my life, and I have Tom to thank for teaching me those skills.

Tom learned new things from me as well. I was the more athletic child, while Tom was more interested in reading, chess and video games. Gradually, Tom became more interested in sports activities and he would come to my swimming lessons and would just watch me swim. He was more interested in swimming, and he learned basic such as floating and the dog paddle from watching me learn how to swim. By observing each other we learned many new skills and developed many new interests (Shaeffer, David, R and Kipp, Katherine, 2009 ).

The theory that most fits my experiences growing up and learning with Tom would be Albert Banduras social learning theory. Social learning theory proposes that people learn behaviors and skills by observing others model those skills or behaviors. For instance, one learns to play chess by watching others play chess. Bandura argues that there are several major components to social learning theory, attention, retention and motivation. First one must be paying attention to the behavior being modeled. Second, retention involves the basic cognitive processes involved in learning the new skill or behavior. Finally, one must be motivated to learn new skills and behaviors. Finally, in order to demonstrate that one has learned the behavior one must be able to reproduce or imitate the behavior (Social Learning Theory A Bandura, 2009 ).

Banduras main perspective is that observational learning involves reciprocal determinism. This is the idea that the behavior of the indvidual and the environment influence each other (Social Learning Theory, 2009 ). In terms of my own experince, this would mean that my learning to play chess from Tom caused him to develop an interest in what I was interested in (swimming), which caused him to develop the motivation to learn how to swim himself. This would also explain behaviors like children and adolescents in the same social group wishing to dress in a similar fashion, or having similar interests as well. There are two final concepts that are important to Banduras social learning theory. Modeling involves a behavior or skill being demonstrated by one person, in order for others to be able to learn this skill or behavior. One example of this would be my learning to play chess by watching Tom and his father play chess. Reinforcement is the reward that a person receives for reproducing the behavior. For instance, Tom reinforced my newly gained chess skills, by praising me and by teaching me more advanced moves and techniques.

Social learning theory explains how my friends and I learned new skills and developed new interests based upon what we observed in terms of the skills and interests that were being developed by the other children in our social group. This is relevant because it explains how children learn not only from adults that they observe demonstrating specific behaviors and skills (Tom learning chess from his father), but, in explaining how those children pass the skills or behaviors they have learned on to other children (Tom teaching the chess skills learned from his father to me).

Social learning theory is also relevant to my experiences because my observation of the skill being modeled by my best friend motivated me to learn to play chess myself. He also developed the motivation to learn new skills by watching me develop my swimming skills. We each learned the basics of those skills by observing each other modeling those skills and once we understood the basics we taught each other to use our new skills at a more advanced level. Social relevant theory is relevant because it explains how and why this type of learning occurs, and why behaviors or skills become prevalent in certain age groups, or within specific social groups within an age group. It can be concluded that my own experiences with my friend Tom, growing up together and learning new skills from each other can best be explained by Banduras social learning theory.