Free Essay Sample: Cognitive Learning Experiment

Piaget's development theory shows that the cognitive ability of a child develops concerning the immediate surrounding. Therefore, the observation learning experiment will be built on predisposing young children to a tense environment involving a short film with adults misusing dolls. The behavior of the children will then be observed about child development theory (Kazi, 2019). The children are expected to develop their responses without external influence from adult peers. The resulting behavior from the study will serve as a real-world example of how a child's surrounding impacts behavioral and psychological development. Since the results for the course can be readily established, the level of comprehension and reaction ability will be readily determined by being compared with the products.

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A cognitive strategy is a method much powerful than the induction method delivered through punishment (Israel, 2020). It is a method used by some parents in rearing children, whereby the characters of the children appeals to their parents. Such of these children's symbols include the sense of obligation, feeling toward other children being corrected for misbehavior, and a child's owns abilities. The nature of cognitive strategy can portray affection and compassion to a child (Israel, 2020). Parents who use the induction method in teaching children will have to explain the cause of action to the child. Also, some parents may have a negative attitude toward this kind of approach. This article will look at ways in which cognitive and induction processes affect the learning ability of a child.

Therefore cognitive proves to be far more effective because, instead of a parent to cite the external reason to portray goodness such "you're better behave or you will miss supper" to a child, they may use helpful inclinations like "I know that you are a kind person who likes to take care of others." The advantage of using such a strategy is that a child gradually develops a sense of owns guild, which in return helps them set their internal standards of the right things and the wrong things.

This also makes a child consider children. Nevertheless, the child's parent should be gentle and should not too authoritative, but they should allow the child to exercises their kindness. Therefore parents should be emotionally supportive and interested in the desires of the child. Cognitive dissonance is a problematic tension that develops when an individual has two simultaneous psychological cognitions, which may be inconsistent or that the individual has an incongruent belief against their behaviors (Niedenthal, 2017).

Both the cognitions and the ideas in question include beliefs, attitudes, and person behaviors awareness (Israel, 2020). Dissonance will likely occur to a person with logical inconsistency perception in his cognition. It mostly results when a person has ideas that are opposite to others. An example of such is, people who believe in the right of animals will see the consumption of meat and wearing clothes made from fur inconsistent.

The contradiction will create dissonance to such people and bring about guilt, anger, anxiety, shame, stress, embarrassment, and many more negative emotional issues. When a person's self-idea comes to conflicts with an essential fundamental element, then dissonance is created. Examples of a person's self-concept can be "Am a good person" or "I did the right thing" (Zayfert, 2019). As a result, a person can experience rationalization when he or she is presented with proof of his bad choices. Other effects that can be observed are denial of negative evidence, confirmation bias, and generation of ego defense mechanism.

Participants Group Assignment

In the experiment, there will be three groups. Children will be assigned to these three groups. The first group will watch the (1) aggressive acts. The second group will watch the (2) non-aggressive shows. The third group will watch no actions. In the first group, children will take a total time of ten minutes in a room to protect adults performing aggressive actions to a child mimic doll called "Bobo." Examples of these aggressive acts are kicking, screaming, and punching the doll. In the second group, children will take a total time of ten minutes in a room to watch adults acting where they played with another toy and neglecting the "Bobo" doll. The children's behaviors will be examined behind a one-way mirror later on when the adult's actors finish and clear from the room.

Independent Variables

Independent Variables are the characteristics of comprehensive mental experiments that are only changed by the researcher and not by any other variables. There are multiple different types of the independent variable. For a particular experiment, the independent variable will depend on the used hypothesis and the investigations the experiment is conducting. For us to identify our independent variable, we can use questions such as which are the variables are being manipulated by the inquiry and which variable is being influenced by the research.

Therefore in our experiment, we can see that the rules which are applied for specific behaviors in children during the learning process are the independent variable. These variables can be cognitive or induction, and when there are changes, they may affect the learning ability of children (Zayfert, 2019). Therefore in the experiment will be searching which test method will have resulted in an improved capacity for a child learning process.

Dependent Variable

Dependent variables are the variables that are being tested or measured in any experiment. In the psychological field, a lot of researchers are working hard to determine how the changes in the independent variable affect the Dependent variables (Niedenthal, 2017). Identifying the dependent variable in an experiment can be quite challenging when the investigation becomes more complicated. Therefore there are a few tricks we may use to help us identify them. (1) Which is the variable being measured by our experiment? (2) Which variables are being manipulated by our investigation? (3) Which variable in our experiment is depending on other variables or is affected when other variables are changed.

Therefore in our experiment, the dependent variable will be the learning ability of a child mainly because a child's ability to comprehend the good and the bad will depend on the strategies used to teach them. In our experiment, the dependent variable will be measured by observing the reactions of children after they have been exposed to the investigation.

Test Procedure

The experiment procedures will be sufficient for observational learning. The systems will use a process that will allow the participants to learn new responses through analysis and observation from the test participant instead of taking direct experience (Niedenthal, 2017). We will use the Bobo doll experiment procedure, which will require children from nursery school as the test participants. These children will be required to watch an act performed by two adults playing with a toy.

In the short film, one of the adults will refuse to share his toys when playing, and therefore the adult partner will destroy him for not sharing. The aggressive deeds of the adult player will be reward by him having to acquire the doll for himself but result in the dejection of the other partner and stop him from playing together (Israel, 2020).

After the children watch the film, each of the children will be left alone in a room full of toys, including some toys that were used in the movie for about 20 minutes. After that researcher sitting behind a one-way mirror will observe the character of children in response to the active play teaching morals. Children will be classified based on the surface they portray after being exposed to different aggressive methods in the act.

Limitation of the Study

One fundamental noticeable limitation during the experiment is the lack of contained timing, that is from the moment the child watches the film and when he's told to sit and play with the toys in the playroom. During that time, a child can develop an irritation emotion caused by their cognitive processes, which may aggravate them (Zayfert, 2019). Another major limitation will be the deficiency of different experimental groups with various factors such as age, gender, and other aggressive personalities, which can be found already on a child's traits.

Also, some other children may already have been exposed to the dark past, or they may have had a very rough day and needed to release their stress out. My recommendation is that researchers should stop knocking over the doll as a way of releasing stress because children will perceive the action of hitting a way of releasing tension.

Conclusion

The benefit of our experiment is that it can provide a control group that will represent the overall population of children that play together in such an environment. Another advantage of the experiment is that the group of children used in the investigation will be taken from the same school; therefore, all of them will have a similar educational background. Although taking all the participating children from the same school can lead to limitations of the experiment, mainly because they may have similar behaviors.

References

Israel, A. (2020). Abnormal child and adolescent psychology. Routledge.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429286896

Kazi, S. (2019). Piagetian Theory of Cognitive Development. The Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development, 1-11. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119171492.wecad364Niedenthal, P. (2017). Psychology of emotion. Psychology Press.

Ziefert, C. (2019). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for PTSD: A case formulation approach. Guilford Press.https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=F7G9DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=cognitive+behavioral+therapy&ots=FbXQgaeUKm&sig=3MpqEBIc4gQbhDAfQXWgowhVj3s