Final answer:
The best explanation for Maria liking a girl from a different ethnic group more and more through her experiences at daycare is observational learning. This occurs when she watches and then models positive interactions and behaviors, leading to increasing fondness for her classmate.
Step-by-step explanation:
The mechanism that would best account for Maria coming to like a girl from a different ethnic group through her experiences at daycare is observational learning. Observational learning occurs when individuals learn new behaviors or attitudes by watching others. In Maria's case, she likely observes positive interactions, shared activities, and friendly behavior from this other girl, or others in their environment, and she models these behaviors herself, leading to a growing fondness for her classmate.
Operant conditioning is learning to associate a behavior with its consequences, often involving rewards or punishments. While this could play a role in Maria's feelings if positive interactions with her classmate were consistently followed by positive outcomes, it's not as directly related to the increasing fondness that comes through shared experiences and emotional bonds formed socially.
Evaluative conditioning is a form of classical conditioning where a person forms an attitude towards something by associating it with another positively or negatively valued thing. However, this doesn't directly explain the social bonding and increase in liking over time that comes from interaction.
Thus, through the process of observational learning, Maria is likely learning that friendship and positive feelings can transcend ethnic differences, and she is internalizing the positive behaviors she observes, which in turn influences her feelings about the other girl.