Correlation between Responsiveness to Information and Vicarious Learning

Abstract

Children who have better developed responsiveness to information skills were expected to be better able to discriminate stimulus cues that signal appropriate social behavior; specifically, that high responders to information, while observing a model being reinforced for emission of critical responses, would in turn emit a higher frequency of critical responses than low responders to information. The subjects were 53 preschool children approximately 4 yr. old. The first phase of the experiment involved administering a picture arrangement test to each subject to divide them into high and low responders to information. Then these two groups were divided into four reinforcement groups to hear a taped word list according to appropriate reinforcement schedule (0%, 33%, 67%, 100%). High responders to information learned more effectively than low responders to information and seemed to need less environmental stimulus control to learn and emit target words. The results indicate that responsiveness to information does affect vicarious learning and interacts with the type and source of environmental cues.