How Experiences Shape Learning: The Role of Observational Learning in Our Development

Ep 81  Have you ever asked your children, "Where did you learn that?" or found yourself reflecting on your own upbringing when someone asks you the same? These common questions highlight the profound impact of observational learning on our development. Often, what our children say or do stems from experiences outside the home—experiences that can range from everyday observations to traumatic events that leave a lasting impression.

Our learning is not just about facts and figures; it is largely shaped by our unique experiences, which can be categorized by the VAKOG model in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This model emphasizes the significance of visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory channels in shaping our understanding. When we communicate, what we demonstrate visually often carries more weight than our words alone. 

Moreover, our perceptual learning preferences play a vital role in how we interpret the world around us. It's essential to recognize that learning is not a one-size-fits-all process; it occurs through myriad influences, from family dynamics to candid moments observed in society.

By understanding these dynamics, we can foster better communication and development in ourselves and our children. So, as we navigate our daily interactions, let's become more mindful of our perceptions and the impact they have on learning. Take care of your perceptual journey and walk through life with awareness. Take care and walk well. 

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 81 of the running man, self-regulation skills project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, an adjunct professor to local community college. And what we're to be discussing today is going to hinge upon what we kind of touched upon in the last podcast in episode 80, having to do with vicarious learning. And that is the principle of caught and taught.

As far as behavioral learning by carrots learning this sort of thing and even having formal teaching so that we can learn There was a term that was coined by mr. Mark Bell in his mark Bell's power project podcast Which I love to listen to and I would certainly encourage you to listen to if you want to hear about health wellness Bodybuilding power lifting the whole bit general health and wellness and dietary stuff really good stuff, but what he posted

In his podcast was that there are sometimes whenever we have kids that come home and it's like they've gone to school to come back repeating and doing things that are like, well, you didn't learn that here. Where did you hear that? And we start to question this is the caught in quotes aspect of the cotton taught learning. then the taught learning would be where we have somebody formally teaching you steps to gain a skill, whatever it is that you might be doing, whether it be an athletic skill or maybe even mathematical for that matter in the sense of academics or

learning how to do something technical like maybe photography, this sort of thing. And in martial arts, this definitely stands to reason on both ends of that spectrum. And it is a spectrum versus just an A or B, this kind or that kind of learning. So in that vein, we're going to be touching upon some details that can be really helpful in understanding not only the Kant and taught behaviors, but also how that relates to self-regulatory skill. Whenever things get stressful, anxious, angry, fearful, fight flight level types,

stuff and the types of learning we may be experiencing within those two poles, so to speak, of caught behaviors and taught behaviors and how they can actually give us an idea as to what it is that we're experiencing when we experience stress in everyday or experience something beyond everyday stress such as something traumatic, that sort of thing. And we will start the discussion there.

armando (02:51.799)
If we consider learning, generally speaking, we have to understand that there are some neurological components to that and physiological.

responses that we get to environment that we call adaption. So any learning that we do is the gaining of a skill, so to speak, and understanding awareness or sensitivity to what we call environmental stimuli. It could be called stress as well. And the word stress bugs, yeah, that's okay. Don't have to use that term. But the idea is still something that would irritate our organism in biological terms, causing us to create change or adapt.

Now, Hans Selye, he talked about way back, I think it was 1953, the general adaption syndrome or the gas syndrome in psychology having to do with levels of stress that we were starting to experience as in a post-industrial revolution society that was starting to grow and population increasing that was beyond what we were probably wired for in the sense that the social psychologists have figured out that we weren't supposed to have been in huge cities and towns.

inner city type environments versus something a little more rural smaller and being able to manage the general stressors of a life that were of a smaller population so to speak proximal population where I lived little villages towns townships this sort of thing so something to keep in mind now this gives us a little background here in a little bit as far as gaining skill because if we're adapting to environment from caveman times to more modern industrialized times there's always something

outside of us, external environment from the skin out that is impacting our internal environment from the skin inward based on that perceptual knowledge or experience or information coming in. And this is where we're going to define a couple of things. Now, neuro-linguistic programming is well known for positing the VACOG or what are the acronym V-A-K-O-G having to do with the perceptual

armando (04:59.889)
cool.

learning types and one is V for visual, A for auditory, K for kinesthetic, O for olfactory, and G for gustation. And yes, we do learn by smell and by taste. Then if you want an example of taste learning, if you ever tasted something that's just wonderful, we tend to learn to remember that very powerfully at the gut level. And we tend to know where those kinds of things are, whether it be the cookie or the cheesecake or whatever it is that we maybe notice. said cheesecake.

It's almost my birthday and that's what I'm thinking about right now. That's actually tomorrow by the way and On the 23rd will be my birthday. So I'm having thoughts of cheesecake Just thought I'd inject this into the podcast today But if I'm lucky I might get some of that later But the idea is still that's a memory that was pleasurable and therefore I've learned not just by taste not only by the visual yes being able to identify that and also By touch the texture that sort of thing all that comes in

But olfactory learning would be like a skunk, one of the most powerful sense you can have out in nature that occurs that an animal says, stay away. It's very shocking and it's on the wind and it tends to float around. You tend to be very wary once you smell that. If you've ever been driving, unfortunately, those little creatures get run over frequently enough that tends to carry in the wind. And if you're very close to it, very strong. If not, you can still get a hint of that. And it gives you an awareness of environment that tells you there's something out there that may not be good for you. So along those lines.

kinesthetically by touch we touch prickly things you don't touch those prickly things again you touch fire or heat then it's like we're not doing that again and as far as auditory things that are recognizable by sound like I love cicadas for instance they are noisy but other sloughs are things that I actually used to harvest with my sons when there were babies just to get them in touch with nature and that was some background stuff that I had from the herbal stuff that I'd learned within my kung fu system

armando (07:00.171)
that required the use of cicada sluffs within the poultices and herb formulas so to speak. didn't want to call them recipes but they are that. yes, so along those lines there was the sound of that that I related to the sluffs and the life of the bug and there were a lot of things. So visually those things that we identified by vision that tends to be a very huge variable in most people's experience unless one is somehow limited in their vision.

environment, generally speaking, primarily speaking, our neurological response is going to be largely visual first. We have so many pathways laid down in our neurological structures that indicate that vision is so important that it takes up a large percentage of what our neurological perceptual inroads, so to speak, to our brain tend to be taken up for visual processing. So the VACOG, V-A-K-O-G, visual auditory kinesthetic olfactory

regustation is not something that NLP invented, it's something that psychology is known about, but NLP kind of took off with it because they started studying learning and learning models and learning how to be more efficient and create in essence what geniuses do and be able to teach it to regular people so that they could increase their skills. the two gentlemen that developed that, Richard Bandler and

John Grindor, some call him Grindor, but they actually modeled quite a few therapists and also high performers in their respective fields and started realizing that these people are doing things well, but that there were models in the way that they could repeat things. They definitely had a formulaic level of

understanding such that they could perform perfectly at those levels. Well, perfect is an exaggeration, but understandably to make the point. And they started figuring out what do these high performers do that the lower level performers do not. And that differential is where this, this neuro-linguistic programming ideal came from. And they have quite a few permutations of that. Now, how does this serve me in self-regulatory skill? Well, from the learning perspective, we learn how to behave by watching, by carriage learning, by observation,

armando (09:20.528)
and we're observation learning machines. We're little sponges of sorts to draw information in and make assumptions about things and we tend to do what science is doing. This is a very natural

embodiment of science and the way science is in that we infer based on information. That does not necessarily mean I have a correct assumption or inference necessarily, and it could be incorrect. But once reality and action come into play, then we start realizing that we learn quicker, even by the mistakes we make, even by an incorrect inference. So that's part of the process of learning. But the important thing we have to point out here is that it's not something that turns off when we get older. And there are those of us

think that somehow we are so smart that we've arrived and really feel bad for them folks because that's when we start thinking very highly of ourselves and believing in an ego structure that doesn't exist mind you it's merely part of your imagination but yet somehow we interact with it and feel like it hurts whenever people say bad words to it this sort of thing so that even is a learned assumed belief structure that we come to believe with great

intensity sometimes such that our body starts to change as a result of those thoughts. I'm a good boy. I'm a bad boy. I'm a good girl. I'm a bad girl. Or I'm a great person and I'm the king of the world versus I'm dirt and I'm not worth much. So we have this huge variance in the beliefs that support that. And often our health will be very reflective of our most common, most proximal and frequent thought process. And a lot of those processes are self-belief, self-generated thoughts sometimes about how things

are expectations and environment this sort of thing. It's overwhelming, therefore I depress. It's too much, I can't handle this and therefore I start developing that sense of helplessness, learned helplessness, assumed helplessness and there are some qualities within those terms that really require a bit of thought to say the least. So the next part, as far as the learning models, whenever we have learning occurring,

armando (11:33.556)
It's important to understand that when we're learning, let's say from somebody and it's the taught paradigm versus caught, that there's a requirement of a definition. And when I'm using the word definition, I'm not thinking just higher cognitive process in the sense that we're going to name, label, and create sentence structure in a paragraph. And this is what those words mean. That is correct, but it's not the only definition that we will require. Because if we're looking at the various levels of

Perception, the VACOG, the V-A-K-O-G, each one of those requires a separate type of definition. And this is where we start getting into communication types, communication styles, and also preference. And we'll kind of talk about a couple of those, but I want us to pay attention to two things. One is that whenever we have, let's say a visual learner, often their visual propensity and sometimes preference,

Artists tend to be very generally speaking visually talented in the area and they can actually pull out more details than the average person and what we see in the literature and NLP in particular but now even

The cognitive behavioral therapists are using the term framing and frame and we'll define that here in a little bit. the frame has to do with a way of looking at it. So it's a lens of sorts. Mind you, those are two metaphors, a frame like a house and a lens like something that you would see in a telescope, this sort of thing. And those metaphors are helpful. But when we're talking about definitions matching a perceptual preference or propensity, then

the new linguistic programmers started to look at language, the structure of language, and also the beliefs that stem from that. But on top of that,

armando (13:24.87)
If somebody was more visually oriented and artistic, once again, let's say they're really good at painting pictures, photography, sculpting, there's some kinesthetic in there because it involves hands, but also the fields that go with that on the inside. Often the language is reflective of that personal preference, but not a hard, fast rule, mind you, it's not perfect, but it is kind of a guideline to help develop rapport. These are just rapport builders. And once again, I'm going to say these are not hard, fast guidelines. And if you take them that

that kind of sets you up for a potential breakdown of communication or rapport or maybe not being able to develop rapport. that's what I'm going to be stating here. Be warned, don't hold these as hard fast rules, but rather use them as guidelines to help formulate or frame or use through a certain sensitized lens to be able to speak with somebody if that's something you need to do. visual components.

Type folk would be somebody that would be speaking generally and I'm saying very generally Things along the lines of all that looks good. that's really bright and the colors on that are vibrant and the details on the lines and the depth these sort of things tend to be reflective of somebody that would be Looking at details that otherwise somebody might just peruse a picture and see well now that that's the Mona Lisa, but you see

somebody that's a painter, notice I'm using the term C, and the painter can see the brush strokes of strength and the frequencies of brush strokes and types and differences in color and tone. And now we're talking about having framed things in a way that somebody that may be more visually oriented as far as their preferred or their propensity or maybe their talent within a certain, let's say, discipline.

Now relating back to self-regulatory skills, well, how is this helpful? Well, one of the first things is that not only is the speak that we have in the report we have with someone else,

armando (15:33.618)
Going from my voice out to them as the receiver. I'm the transmitter but also how I speak to myself whenever I'm by myself Whenever I adjudicate myself. that was bad. You're a bad boy. Good girl this sort of thing or Better yet, you know, you're a failure things that are more General and larger than me having to do with process that I can't change and therefore, you know There's weight to those adjudications or judgments I have of myself. So it's really important to pay attention to how

somebody communicates, also it's really important in self-regulation to understand how do I speak to myself? What are the words that I'm saying? Am I even using my own language towards myself or am I using someone else's measuring stick? The one maybe that I assumed or took with me because I was raised by parents that use certain terms, certain beliefs. And one of the things that growing up in Spanish, it was not even a proper term, but

Bad luck type terms whenever my parents would discuss having a bad turn once in a while This is way before the positive mindset type stuff started coming out and they certainly weren't exposed too much to it They would talk about having a certain type of luck that was indicated by the metaphor they used of an ape being bent over and of course, you know, one didn't want to indicate what would happen to that poor ape in the metaphor, but Understandably you probably get the idea and this was kind of their

definition of what their luck was like or so they thought whenever things weren't going so well I get it totally get it but things like this stay with you and whenever we have certain beliefs we assume them and I remember running into situations in my own life where things were difficult but I just refused just like no it's not like that then even though I may not have had the answer or had a way to fix it I just didn't want to believe that there was this like absolute level of overarching luck that I couldn't

fight against that was always this ball and chain tied to mirrors that perpetual little Charlie Brown cloud that was hanging over my head always raining on my parade this sort of thing but in the conceptual that sounds bad in the reality I love rain and I go and train in the rain it's gorgeous but the idea once again is that belief that we get instilled that somehow we take with us without question because we had our adult

armando (17:59.696)
models, our mentors, our parents, our teachers, maybe that may have said things, maybe our relatives or somebody that was angry and emotionally charged and said something and it stuck. This is the caught paradigm of learning and it may have been framed in a way that may have caught your propensity for learning what it'd be kinesthetic by touch. Maybe there was

Spanking involved or maybe some somebody shoved you and they said something rude to you and it just stuck to you because your body did not like that and there's a memory tied to that intensity in the sound auditory maybe hearing stuff that was very shocking or maybe hearing things or being told you can't hear things because you're not old enough and then having feelings about that but all those routes of perception are very important and how we learn and the taught perception not perceptible learning style type rather

it involves somebody formally teaching you how to take steps to do things like when we go into academia there are certain steps that we take in learning some of it is passive learning now with all this electronics but active learning when you have somebody actually teaching you a physical skill like ballet

archery, martial arts, there's a very kinesthetic quality there, but part of it is a lot of monkey see, monkey do, watch and learn and follow, and then corrections are made along the way until you, even though you're emulating what you can based on your visual.

Assumption of how things look you may not be aware of what your body's doing when you're trying to meet that picture you have in your mind of what you actually saw and then Over time things get better with practice and repetition. That's the taught aspect from the caught to taught Continuum of learning if you will if we can call it that between those two poles of learning and The next thing that's really important

armando (19:50.45)
The concept of one shot learning. this is something that octopi are known for because of their high intelligence within the aquatic world in the ocean and also the capacity for problem solving. Of course, each arm has the equivalence of a brain, so to speak. So they have an advantage sometimes, but what we need to pay attention to is that we as humans, whenever we learn things, sometimes we see something that's so incredibly novel, something like maybe seeing a unicorn crapping rainbows. It's like, wow.

I'm gonna remember that and if you ever have an experience where you see something that you would not have expected then those things tend to Stay in your perceptual field for a moment and then they stay in your mind as a memory now whenever we have something along the lines of the extremity of trauma but we have report from people that have PTSD or that they have a traumatic recall or they recall and they remember and their body gets scared they may even physically shirk tremble

This sort of thing and it's not reliving but rather remembering but the body Takes that memory is compelling even though we know cognitively. Hey, I'm safe I'm pulling up the memory but it's making me feel kind of twitchy cringy this sort of thing or afraid Then we realize that there's a compelling quality to that memory and our bodies responding in that way now

What is important about this is that you don't have to have repetition to have trauma create a memory. You don't have to have repetition to have a very novel event, something that's absolutely unique.

to create a memory that you'll never forget. Sometimes that involves feelings, like when somebody gets married, and sometimes you can have visual things pop up such that you'll never forget those images. Open up a book and you see a picture that's grotesque, or even one that doesn't fit your paradigm. remember being rather young and opening a book about an aspect of visual learning, but yet there was a picture from

armando (21:53.81)
During the times that the Chinese in the 18 early 1920s, they still did like public executions. And I remember seeing a picture of this poor woman that had been tortured basically and killed by public.

Execution, but I remember seeing that beginning picture and then the end picture that they had taken black and whites of and I was Grossly fascinated. It's like well what happens to a person that never seen death at that point and then seeing that sort of horrendous death not realizing that not all death is the same and not always by torture or trauma, but yet I saw that and it just shocked something in my brain and I'll never forget those images

And I went into the medical field not long after that in the military, but having seen that I can't say that it was a preparation, but it definitely made me see human beings differently generally in a social sense, but also physically in the sense that we are vulnerable and limited human beings and that

taught me something, but also it kind of shocked me in a way that I'll never forget what I saw in that picture. And I had beliefs that started to rise up as a result of that. So why is this important? As an example, one is that not everything happens in our environment directly. We can be done as an indirect witnessing by like reading a book, seeing a book or seeing someone else being traumatized for that matter at a distance, but yet it's close enough that it shocks us or maybe even seeing it on

television that can be potentially traumatizing as well. But also those are the things that we remember for a long time and it doesn't always have to be happening directly to us for the memory to be made and for it to impact us directly in a powerful sense. So an important thing to pay attention to one shot learning can happen.

armando (23:51.587)
And those lessons aren't always pleasant, but it doesn't always have to be a negative or bad thing. It can just be a very novel interaction and it can be a very positive one as well. But if you see something that literally changes your paradigm at that point, often people talking about being transformed, often their mind and their idea on what the possibilities are is what transforms. And after that, the pursuit of a skill or development of a way of doing things and being Ten-Sen-Su after that. So something

to think about something to chew on there. Now a couple more things that I want to add towards a self regulatory skill is that in development of skills often whenever we see with our eyes there are components of our eyes that are picking up motion that are highly sensitive to motion and those aspects of our eyes are picked up as far as signals go by the rods and these are meant to pick up motion but also that's part of our night vision.

and this plays a big part in how we see but that part of our vision is not the very central aspect or the foveal aspect of our vision where we look forward and have 3D depth and identify differences in colors and hue that is our foveal vision and that's much slower and that's the part that actually ties into the naming labeling aspect of our brain whereas the edges of our periphery our peripheral vision all the way out past our shoulders actually without having to turn your eyes

left to right or looking with your head left to right, we're able to perceive motion. And that sensitivity, whenever we're in the dark, allows us to perceive the difference in what is kind of a flattish, almost a low resolution type picture. And you don't have to see details to note the differences in that space. That's called spatial vision. But also whenever you are relying on that, that tends to

Be like the priming aspect to something that could become fighter and flight very quickly and to be able to determine whether or not something is stressful or threatening this sort of thing within the distance of about 10 to 30 milliseconds. start to differentiate within 60 to a hundred. We can determine it's friend or foe within 150 to 300 milliseconds. We can split that signal and decide whether or not it's friend foe can that do I know them or do I need to run in the fullest sense? And then our behavior ensues at that point. And that can be very mulch.

armando (26:17.433)
an impulse, a shutter, a run, the freeze, a fight, flee, or even a eat or mate for that matter. So

Within our learning, this capacity to determine what is threatening in our environment or that that is helpful to us in our environment happens very quickly. It doesn't mean we don't have any thought or choice in the matter, but whenever it's that fast or not unlike when we get really granular at the level of the mitochondria, for instance, our choice isn't involved per se, but it definitely influences how we choose, but that doesn't take our free will away. But that also has a lot to do with how we learn, how we choose things based on a very visceral,

a very deep sense of what's going on that could be helpful or harmful to us. And that tends to shape the narrow for that matter some of the choices we may have. So just some things to think about really deep stuff, but about the learning, I just want to touch upon the caught and taught aspect and what are the forces that may drive us to be more apt to catch a behavior.

Versus being taught one formally where we tend to choose and kind of the things involved in that so we've covered those details today I appreciate your time and talking with me today or me talking to you more correctly But I certainly appreciate you listening to my podcast and if you want to share this podcast, please do I'm on YouTube and all the major podcast Platforms that is Spotify. I'm on Amazon music also. I heart radio and iTunes as well iTunes is

nifty and that they have those transcripts that are available to you if you have anyone that you know that is hearing impaired they can benefit from that also if you have any questions of me you can send them to the email at running man get skills project at gmail and I'd love to hear from you let me know how you doing out there and for now you take care really good talking to you and walk well