Stimulus-Response bindings and their relation to social learning

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Carina Giesen
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393269228

This project aims to investigate whether transient stimulus-response bindings can be understood as the cognitive basis of social learning by observation (Bandura, 1986). Indeed, stimulus-response binding and retrieval (SRBR) processes occur also between stimuli and merely observed responses. Similar to social learning, observational SRBR is strongly affected by the social relevance between models and observers (e.g., cooperation/competition, chronic interdependency, positive vicarious feedback; animacy; Giesen et al., 2014, 2016, 2018; 2021). Also, basic SRBR principles account for social phenomena (attitude formation, interpersonal trust, conformity, etc.) due to representing self and others in terms of feature codes (e.g., Hommel & Stevenson, 2018; Hommel & Colzato, 2015; Kim & Hommel, 2015; Hommel, 2018). Intriguingly, whereas social learning theory provides a sound analysis of the macro-processes involved in observational learning phenomena (i.e., attention, memory retention, action reproduction, and motivation; Bandura, 1986), the underlying cognitive micro-processes by which observed actions become incorporated into one’s action regulation repertoire remain unspecified. The Binding and Retrieval in Action Control (BRAC) framework (Frings et al., 2020), in turn, specifies exactly these micro-processes that are involved in behaviour automatization and action planning, but so far neglects the influence of social learning by observation. Thus, the project will fill this gap and will unify research on observationally acquired SRBR with social learning theory. Ultimately, this will provide insight to which extent the BRAC framework allows for a re-formulation of social learning theory via establishing SRBR as the cognitive basis of social learning. The project will contribute to the overarching aims of the research unit by (I) further specifying core ideas of the BRAC framework and by broadening its methodological arsenal and by (II) transferring the BRAC framework to the field of social and observational learning in real-life and online interactions, which will profoundly extend the scope of the BRAC framework.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2790: Binding and Retrieval in Action Control
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Bernhard Hommel; Professor Dr. Klaus Rothermund