Imitative behavior in kindergarten children was either reinforced or not reinforced prior to seeing a male aggressive model. The children were tested for imitation and retention of the behaviors. Study provides support for both contiguity'' and generalized imitation'' theories of social modeling. (ST)

Traditional learning theories stress that people are either conditioned through reward and punishment or by close association with neutral or evocative stimuli. These direct experience theories do not account for people's learning complex behavior through observation. Attentional, retention, motoric reproduction, reinforcement, and motivational…

This experiment was designed to assess whether the expected and actual performance of black and white students on an academic task would be differentially affected by the race of the successful models observed. Since males and females might not be equally influenced by the modeling effects, separate analyses were planned for males and females of…