Date of Award
1978
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Graduate School
First Advisor
Roger C. Katz
First Committee Member
Kenneth L. Beauchamp
Second Committee Member
John Lutzker
Third Committee Member
John H. Mabry
Abstract
The present study examined the effects of adult, film mediated models on the prosocial behavior of school children. Also the effect of congruency and incongruency between the model's response and the response the children were asked to perform was investigated. Thirty third-grade students, 19 female and 11 male, were randomly assigned to three groups. The first group observed a short film of an adult model providing helping (positive) feedback to a young boy who was playing a marble maze game. The second group was treated identically to the first except that the model provided coercive (negative) feedback. The third group observed a neutral (no feedback) model. Each of the three groups was then divided in half. Half of the students from each group were asked to give feedback to an unseen boy who was playing the marble maze game by speaking into a microphone (congruent with model). The other half of the students gave the unseen boy feedback manually by pressing levers (incongruent with model). The results indicated that the students who gave verbal feedback displayed significantly more imitation than those who gave motor feedback. The students who made verbal responses also made statements about the unseen boy's performance on the game that conformed more closely to the type of feedback (positive, negative, neutral) the model provided than those students who made motor responses.
Pages
42
Recommended Citation
Melcher, Wallace Arthur. (1978). The influence of response modality on children's imitation of helping and coercive behavior. University of the Pacific, Thesis. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/1955
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