Learner and Learning Process Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The first psychology laboratory was set up in 1879, in Leipzig, Germany.

Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory for experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig in 1879, the event usually taken as the beginning of psychology as a separate science.

The other dates and places are later and are not the first; in India, for example, the first psychology department and laboratory were set up at Calcutta University in 1915.

Answer: C

The key gives Freiderick Perls.

Gestalt psychology as a theory of perception was founded by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka, none of whom is among the options. Frederick (Fritz) Perls applied Gestalt ideas to psychotherapy, developing Gestalt therapy in the 1940s and 1950s, and is the only option associated with Gestalt.

Carl Jung founded analytical psychology, Carl Rogers client-centred therapy, and Abraham Maslow the hierarchy of needs.

Answer: A

The concept of tridosha comes from the Charak Samhita.

The Charaka Samhita, the foundational text of Ayurveda, describes the three doshas, vata, pitta and kapha, whose balance determines a person's health and constitution (prakriti), and so their physical and mental characteristics.

Vedanta is a school of philosophy, the Bhagavad Gita speaks of the three gunas rather than doshas, and the Bible has no such concept.

Answer: D

This is a case of displacement.

Displacement is a defence mechanism in which feelings aroused by one target are redirected to a safer, less threatening one. Unable to show anger to the teacher, the child vents it on pets or toys at home.

Aggression describes the behaviour but not its redirection. Rationalisation offers acceptable reasons for one's behaviour, and denial refuses to accept a painful reality.

Answer: D

The first to give education a psychological base was Johan Herbert, that is, Johann Friedrich Herbart.

Herbart (1776-1841) built a theory of teaching on a systematic psychology of the mind, in particular apperception: new ideas are learned by relating them to ideas already in the mind. From this he derived the formal steps of instruction (preparation, presentation, association, generalisation and application), and he is called the father of scientific pedagogy.

John Locke wrote on education, but from empiricist philosophy rather than a psychological theory of instruction. Stanley Hall and Alfred Binet came later, in child study and intelligence testing.

Answer: B

This period is the incubation stage of creativity.

Graham Wallas described four stages of the creative process. In preparation the problem or experience is gathered and studied. In incubation the person stops working on it consciously while it matures in the mind, often for a long time. In illumination the idea suddenly takes shape, and in verification it is worked out and checked.

The months or years between the poet seeing the incident and writing the poem are the time when the experience lies dormant and develops unconsciously, which is incubation. Seeing the incident is preparation, the moment the poem comes is illumination, and revising it is verification.

Answer: A

Photography is an example of visual (visual-spatial) intelligence.

In Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, spatial intelligence is the ability to perceive the visual world accurately and to transform and represent it: composition, framing, light and perspective. Photographers, painters, architects and navigators show it strongly.

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is skill in using the body, as in dance or sport. Logical-mathematical intelligence is reasoning with numbers and logic, and musical intelligence is sensitivity to pitch and rhythm. Handling a camera uses the hands, but the art of photography lies in seeing and composing images.

Answer: B

Sternberg's sequence is encoding, inferring, mapping, application, justification, response.

In his componential analysis of analogical reasoning (A is to B as C is to ?), Sternberg described the steps of information processing. The person encodes the terms, infers the relation between A and B, maps the relation from A to C, applies it to C to generate the answer, justifies the chosen answer when no option fits perfectly, and finally responds.

The order matters: justification checks the answer before it is given, so it must come before the response. The other options either put response before justification, or put mapping before inferring, or inferring after application.

Answer: C

The activity belongs to the learning of principles stage.

In Gagne's hierarchy of learning (signal learning, stimulus-response, chaining, verbal association, multiple discrimination, concept learning, principle learning and problem solving), each type builds on the ones below. A principle is a relation between two or more concepts, such as 'heat expands metals'. A child who links concepts and applies the relation consistently is learning a principle.

Concept learning is forming one concept, a stage below. Multiple discrimination is telling stimuli apart, below that again. Problem solving is the stage above, combining principles to solve a new problem.

Answer: B

Lewin used topology to explain a person's life space.

Kurt Lewin's field theory describes behaviour as a function of the person and the environment, B = f(P, E), together making up the life space. He represented the life space with concepts from topology, the branch of geometry dealing with regions and boundaries regardless of size or shape: regions the person can enter, boundaries and barriers between them, and paths to goals. His 1936 book was Principles of Topological Psychology.

He added vectors to show the direction and strength of forces in the field, but the life space itself is described topologically. Geometry and psychology are too general to be the answer.