Effects of intermittent modelling on observational learning.
Modeling new words only half the time teaches preschoolers just as fast as modeling every time.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers wanted to know if kids need to see a model every single time. They worked with preschoolers who had typical development. An adult showed new describing words either every time or only half the time. A third group saw no model at all.
What they found
Kids who saw the model used far more new words than kids who saw nothing. The surprise: seeing the model only half the time worked just as well as seeing it every time. Less modeling still gave big language gains.
How this fits with other research
Zeiler (1969) already showed that a short film of peers talking can pull quiet preschoolers up to normal social levels. Marcucella et al. (1978) now adds that live models don’t have to be perfect to work.
Zhou et al. (2018) moved modeling into a phone app for parents of toddlers with autism. Parents hit high fidelity and kids gained words. The 1978 lab result helps explain why the app works: intermittent clips still give enough model.
Bacon-Prue et al. (1980) looked at adult drinkers in a bar. One or two peer models did nothing; four models were needed. That seems to clash with the preschool finding, but the difference is dose and age. Young children learn from one adult; grown-ups in a noisy tavern need a crowd.
Why it matters
You can ease your workload right away. When you teach new tacts, mands, or social phrases, model the target only half the trials. The kids will still learn and you free up time for other targets. This is handy in busy classrooms, clinics, and home sessions where perfect consistency is hard to keep up.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A large research literature suggests that modelling in the absence of reinforcement for either the model's or the observer's behavior is a potent source of social learning. This literature is based entirely, however, on experiments using models that always display the critical behaviors. It is possible, therefore, that results obtained in these experiments would not generalize to natural settings in which modelling is intermittent. The effects of intermittent modelling were examined using three groups of 15 four- and five-year-old children. Male and female children from middle-income families were individually exposed to an adult model who alternated descriptions of pictures of common objects. With one group, the model used no descriptive adjectives (color or number) in her descriptions after baseline; she used descriptive adjectives with 50% of the pictures with a second group, and 100% of the pictures with a third. Analyses of the data showed that the children substantially increased their use of descriptive adjectives in both modelling groups, but not in the no-modelling group. The fact that there were no significant differences between the 50% and 100% modelling groups suggests that results obtained in studies using consistent modelling can be generalized to natural settings.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1978 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1978.11-87