Learner and Learning Process Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The test for maladjustment is The Bell Adjustment inventory.

Hugh M. Bell's Adjustment Inventory (1934) is a self-report questionnaire that gives separate scores for home, health, social and emotional adjustment (and occupational adjustment in the adult form). Unusually high scores in an area point to maladjustment there, which is why it is widely used in school guidance.

Allport's best-known instruments, the Study of Values and the A-S Reaction Study, measure values and the ascendance-submission trait rather than adjustment. Shaffer and Shoben are known for a textbook, The Psychology of Adjustment, not for an adjustment test, and 'Colman's test' is not a standard measure of maladjustment.

Answer: C

The idea of social intelligence was put forth by Thorndike.

E. L. Thorndike, in a 1920 article, divided intelligence into abstract, mechanical and social intelligence, defining the last as the ability to understand and manage people and to act wisely in human relations.

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (1983) includes a related interpersonal intelligence, but it came six decades later. Daniel Goleman popularised emotional intelligence in 1995 and later wrote on social intelligence, building on Thorndike's idea. W. H. Sheldon is known for his body-type (somatotype) theory of personality.

Answer: C

The option that is not a goal of counselling is To help the counsellee attain self-control.

The goals listed in the other options come from humanistic counselling. Carl Rogers described the aim of counselling as helping the client become a 'fully functioning person', and Abraham Maslow's self-actualisation, with the related idea of self-realisation, expresses the same aim of growth towards one's full potential.

Self-control is not one of these growth goals. A counsellee may gain it along the way, but counselling is not aimed at controlling behaviour; it aims at self-understanding and growth, which is the textbook distinction this question tests.

Answer: C

The definition is given by Brewer J.M.

John M. Brewer, in Education as Guidance (1932), treated guidance as part of all education, aimed at making the individual capable of directing his own life. Guidance, in his view, is the process by which a person becomes able to guide himself, rather than being directed by others.

Arthur J. Jones defined guidance as the help given by one person to another in making choices and adjustments and in solving problems, which puts the guide, not the individual, at the centre. Ruth Strang described guidance as helping each individual to discover and develop his potentialities. Carter V. Good's definition, from his Dictionary of Education, also centres on the guide's assistance.

Answer: A

Proctor's types are (i) Educational (ii) Vocational (iii) Character development (iv) Content and physical activity.

William M. Proctor, an early American writer on guidance, classified guidance by the areas of a student's life: educational guidance, vocational guidance, guidance in social and civic activities, in health and physical activities, in the worthy use of leisure, and in character-building activities. Option A draws all four of its items from that list, the last being his health and physical activities.

The other options bring in economical, religious or personal guidance, which are not categories in Proctor's scheme, so each of them contains at least one type he did not name.

Answer: A

Experiential learning focuses on the learning process for the Individual.

Experiential learning, set out by David Kolb (1984) on the work of Dewey, Lewin and Piaget, describes how a person learns from direct experience through a cycle: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. The model describes the meaning each learner makes of his or her own experience.

Experiential activities can be run with small or large groups and with peers, but the theory's focus is the individual learner's process. Learning that is defined by groups working together is collaborative or cooperative learning.

Answer: C

Skinner does not take cognizance of Insight and understanding.

As a radical behaviourist, B. F. Skinner explained learning entirely through observable responses and their consequences: behaviour that is reinforced is strengthened. Internal mental events such as insight and understanding cannot be observed, so they have no place in his account.

Insight was the central idea of Gestalt psychologists such as Wolfgang Kohler, and understanding that of cognitive theorists, which is where the contrast lies. Skinner did deal with motivation (through deprivation and reinforcement), with forgetting (as extinction) and with differences in rate of learning, so the options pairing those with understanding are not the best answer.

Answer: D

A reading readiness test does not measure Number computation.

Reading readiness tests, such as the Metropolitan Readiness Tests, check whether a young child has the skills needed to begin learning to read: recognising letters, visual discrimination of shapes and letters, auditory discrimination of sounds, vocabulary and verbal comprehension.

Number computation is part of number or mathematics readiness, not reading readiness. The other three options are exactly the skills reading readiness tests examine.

Answer: D

The key's answer is intrinsic motivation of the learner.

Albert Bandura's social learning theory explains learning by observing a model through four processes: attention, which depends on the model's features (the stimulus properties of the model), retention of the modelled (exemplified) behaviour, reproduction of it, and motivation, which comes chiefly from the consequences the model is seen to receive (vicarious reinforcement).

The model's stimulus properties, the behaviour the model demonstrates and the consequences of that behaviour are therefore all things observational learning depends on. The learner's intrinsic motivation is not one of the conditions Bandura's theory rests on, since it stresses external models and observed consequences.

Answer: A

It is an example of Rationalization.

Rationalization is a defence mechanism in which a person explains away a failure or unacceptable behaviour with a plausible but false reason, protecting self-esteem. Arnav blames questions 'out of syllabus' rather than admitting he did not do well enough; it is the 'sour grapes' pattern.

Repression pushes painful memories out of awareness, compensation makes up for a weakness by excelling in another area, and projection attributes one's own unacceptable feelings to others. None of them fits giving a convenient excuse for failure.