According to Bandura's Social Learning theory, what is it called when a person…

Bandura's Social Learning Theory (also called Observational Learning) explains that people can acquire an entirely new behaviour simply by watching a model perform it — through the stages of attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation — without needing to be directly reinforced themselves. This process of learning a behaviour by observing and then reproducing it is called Modeling (also known as observational learning or imitation learning).

In this item, the learner watches another person perform a behaviour and then reproduces that very same behaviour. This observe-then-reproduce sequence is the defining feature of Modeling: the learner attends to the model's action, retains a mental representation of it, and reproduces it as their own behaviour, guided vicariously by the model rather than by direct personal reinforcement.

• Adaptation describes a general adjustment to environmental demands or changing conditions; it does not specifically refer to acquiring a behaviour by watching and imitating another person.

• Self-observation means monitoring and evaluating one's own actions or performance; it does not describe learning a new behaviour by watching someone else perform it.

• Efficacy expectation (self-efficacy) is a person's belief in their own capability to successfully carry out a behaviour; it concerns confidence in performing an action, not the mechanism by which the behaviour is acquired through observation.

Because the behaviour is learned by observing and then repeating a model's actions, the correct term is Modeling.