In: Psychology
Social cognitive view of behaviour emphasis on the fact that behaviour is governed by cognitive processes along with external stimulus and response pattern like observing, judging and memory and also by imitation from others. Social cognitive approach come from Albert Bandura, this approach helps psychologists to describe, predict and modify different behaviours.
Children with special needs are the one who arte not able to adapt according to the way society works. They are not able to deal with others on emotional and behavioural level and therefore need special attention.
According to Bandura three factors that are: the environment, behaviour itself and cognitive factors interact with each other and influence one another in predicting behaviour. According to Bandura this relationship is called reciprocal determinism. In this theory environment includes physical surroundings and people present around, behaviour is the one which person will perform keeping in mind consequences and previous situations in which his actions are either reinforced or punished.
Another important aspect of this theory is self efficacy which is person perception of how effective behaviour is in a particular situation.
While working with special children this theory can be very useful since it can help to overcome the emotional and behavioural challenges faced with special children. Children can be told and conditioned to behave according to right way by showing them models for right behaviour that ultimately leads to positive consequences and other one leads to negative consequences. They can also be told to judge and anticipate the situations and also to remember previous scenarios where their behaviour is praised or they are scolded and punished for it. their self efficacy also plays an important role since they can be asked to perceive that what they feel about their own behaviour which they have performed and what they think have effect of this on their surrounding environment.
so this theory can be effective while dealing with special children.