Vicarious acquisition of a simple concept with experimenter as model

Abstract

Samples of 3- and 4-year old, upper-middle-class, 4- and 5-year old culturally disadvantaged, and 6-year old middle-class children were taught an equivalence-rule by the experimenter, herself serving as model. From pre-modeling baseline scores of virtually zero (which no-modeling control groups maintained), all age-samples gave substantial and highly significant changes demonstrating observationally-induced concept acquisition. A procedure combining modeling with verbal rule-cues did not surpass modeling-alone on the initial task, but appeared to enhance rule-transfer to a new stimulus arrangement.