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RALI Answers |
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1. True. An adult brings to learning situations a tremendous range of stored learning--the accumulation of experiences in everyday living. These are useful resources for learning (Ausubel, 1968; Brundage & Mackeracher, 1980; Hendrickson, 1970; Lorge, 1963).
2. True. The adult's time perspective changes from one of postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application. Accordingly, the orientation to learning shifts from being subject centered to being problem centered (Comfort, 1974; Knowles, 1984). Research generally supports the notion that most adults who voluntarily undertake a learning project do so more in the hope of solving a problem than in the intention of learning a subject (Cross, 1981; Knowles, 1980).
3. True. The more experience a person has had, the more the past probably will interfere with the present. It is easier for an experienced person to learn a completely new task than to do a familiar task in a new way (Smith, 1982; Zahn, 1967).
4. True. The more the facilitator of learning can relate information to the experience of the learner, the better and faster the adult will learn. Thus, the adult learner should be encouraged to integrate new or difficult concepts with personal experiences and to use this experience to help with the present and the future (Whipple, 1957; Zahn, 1967). Cross (1981) concludes that most adults are responding to transitions in needs for new job skills or for knowledge pertaining to family life serve as "triggers" and imitate learning activity. As a rule, adults like their learning activities to be meaningful to their life situations, and they want the learning outcomes to have some immediacy of application (Brookfield, 1986; Knowles, 1984; Tough, 1979).
5. True. Aslanian and Brickell (1980), Knowles (1984), and Tough (1979) indicate that adults are constantly engaged in learning, and only a relatively small percentage of their learning occurs in a classroom.
6. True. For many adults, especially older and more experienced ones, long experience will cause them to be set in their ways and resentful of change (Hendrickson, 1970; Kidd, 1973; Zahn, 1967). The adult's reservoir of past experience represents both a potentially rich resource for learning and an obstacle to learning (Smith, 1982).
7. False. Adults are inclined to distribute their energy and involvement according to the kind and amounts of learning perceived to be most beneficial immediately and for the future. Adults should be able to influence their own learning goals as a means of ensuring that their goals meet their specific needs (Comfort, 1974; Jensen, 1963). One unequivocal implication of adults' different orientations toward life and of their broader experience bases is that they can usually identify or help to identify what they need to learn (smith, 1982).
8. True. Many adults desire minimum time expenditure to complete educational objectives, as they have compelling responsibilities that compete --for time and attention (Comfort, 1974). In most surveys, Lack of time rivals cost as first among the obstacles to education (Cross, 1981).
9. False. Many adult facilitators are not provided with appropriate information about the biological, psychological, and sociological aspects of adult development and have made the erroneous assumption that adults and children have the same orientation to learning (Birren & Woodruff, 1973). Adults enter into education with a different time perspective from that of children, which in turn produces a difference in the way adults view learning (Knowles, 1980).
10. False. According to Chickering (1981) and Knowles (1984), as individuals grow older, they tend to demonstrate an ever-increasing range of individual differences.
11. False. Older students are able to learn most effectively when they set their own pace, when they take periodic breaks, and when learning episodes are distributed according to a rationale dictated by content (Brundage & Mackeracher, 1980; Knox, 1977). Mental Abilities
12. False. Botwinick (1973) reports that the classical pattern of verbal and performance scores changing with age has been replicated many times and now constitutes one of the best-replicated results in the literature. Cattell (1963) makes a distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence, contending that the two types of intelligence show different patterns in aging that are complementary in terms of adaptation. Baltes, Dittman-Kohli, and Dixon (1984) emphasize a distinction between the mechanics and the pragmatics of intelligence.
13. True. Sharon (1971) indicates that the pattern of the scores in different disciplines changes as a function of age. Performance on tests of humanities, social science, and history improves with age, while achievement in mathematics and the natural sciences declines. Knox (1986) notes that performance in learner tasks such as vocabulary and general information improves during adulthood.
14. True. The early work by Thorndike, Bregman, Tilton, and Woodyard (1928) established this basic premise. After age forty, increasing psychomotor slowness is often an important factor in explaining individual performance (Long, 1983).
15. True. Thorndike, Bregman, Tilton, and Woodyard (1928) established that age clearly impacts the time required to complete a task. The only thing that decreases with age is the rate of learning, not the ability to learn. In general it can be concluded that the time required for learning new things increases with age (Cross, 1981). Salthouse (1985) and Poon (1987) indicate that older adults tend to be slower and have more problems learning new information.
16. True. One of the most significant problems in assessing an adult's ability is the degree to which information has been obtained from cross sectional rather than longitudinal studies. The decline in intellectual function with increasing age intimated by cross-sectional data (Jones Conrad, 1933; Wechsler, 1955) has not been supported by longitudinal studies, which indicate growth into middle age and beyond. When a wide rang of learning abilities is included, the general conclusion is that most adults in their forties and fifties have about the same ability to learn as they had in their twenties and thirties, particularly when they can control the pace (Knox, 1977).
17. True. Darkenwald and Merriam (1982) surmise that adults' readiness to learn depends on the amount of their previous learning.
18. False. Bilash and Zubek (1960), Owens (1966), and others have provided reliable data reporting that scores in perceptual and dexterity tests declined from the teen years through the seventies. Manual dexterity is greatest at about age thirty-three; then the hands and fingers become progressively moreclumsy (Schlossberg, 1978).
19. False. Bischof (1969) has reported that adult performance in intelligence tests calls for certain attributes such as being motivated and persisting in the task in order for the adult to perform well.
20. True. Early studies by Knox and Sjogren (1965) and Sjogren, Knox, and Grotelueschen (1968) consistently found that not only level of education but also recency of participation in the educational activity were related to an adult's ability to learn. Knox (1977) found recency of participation in formal education to be correlated with more effective learning.
21. False. Knox (1986), Kolb (1981), and Smith (1982), contend that adults accumulate many life experiences, resulting in a distinct preference for modes of learning and thereby resulting in individual learning styles.
22. True. According to Larson (1970), too few teachers know enough about the adult learner's anxiety level. Many adult students feel they do not possess the necessary study skills (Comfort, 1974). Physiological Factors
23. True. In most people the peak of auditory performance seems to be reached before the fifteenth birthday, and there is a gradual but consistent decline until about age sixty-five (Florida Department of Education, 1973; Kidd, 1973; Kimmel, 1974).
24. True. The inability to hear can produce emotional disturbances such as fear, insecurity, and the inability to learn new concepts the Florida Department of Education, 1973). The psychological damage may be more serious than the actual physical impairment (Cross, 1981). Woodruff-Pak (1988) indicates that hearing loss can impair an individual's capacity for interaction as it interferes with the ability to understand communication.
25. True. Visual acuity increases during childhood and early adolescence and then remains quite stable between twenty and forty years of age (Knox, 1977). In most circumstances, peak visual functioning occurs during late adolescence or early adulthood (Hayslip & Panek, 1989).
26. True. For normal learning tasks after age fifty, the amount of illumination becomes a critical factor. A fifty-year-old is likely to need 50 percent more illumination than a twenty-year-old (Cross, 1981).
27. True. With increasing age, there is a decrease in the ability of the eye to focus on objects at varying distances. This results mainly from a loss of elasticity in the lens of the eye (Hayslip & Panek, 1989). Between the ages of twenty and fifty, there is typically an appreciable loss of accommodation power and elasticity of the lens, after which the decline is more gradual (Knox, 1977; Rogers, 1986).
28. True. Most individuals above the age of forty will probably show some loss of high-tone perception (Brant, Wood, & Fozard, 1986; Botwinick, l973; Rogers, 1986).
29. True. One effect of aging (in the absence of disease) is a slowing of reaction time, regardless of the sensory modality and regardless of the muscle used for the response (Kimmel, 1974; Woodruff-Pak, 1988). After age forty, increasing psychomotor slowness is often an important factor in explaining individual differences (Long, 1983).
30. True. Throughout the adult lifetime there is a slowing of the central auditory processes to auditory stimuli. For this reason many aging individuals find it difficult to follow rapid speech in spite of little or no hearing loss (Hand, 1973; Woodruff-Pak, 1988).
31. False. For the general population vision is at its best at about age eighteen; it then declines gradually until around age forty, at which time there is a sharp decline for the next fifteen years (Cross, 1981). Uncorrected distance acuity declines rapidly between ages forty and sixty (Fozard, Gittings, & Schock, 1986).
32. True. Strength peaks between ages twenty-five and thirty, after which the muscles--particularly in the back and legs--weaken unless maintained by exercise (Hodgson and Busherk, 1981; Rogers 1986; Schlossberg, 1978).
33. False. It is now generally agreed that if there is an age limit on learning performance, it is not likely to occur until around age seventy five (Kidd, 1973). Psychological Factors
34. True. The elderly frequently appear to live in a social climate that is not conducive to feelings of adequacy, usefulness, security, and good adjustment in later years. If these concepts are subsumed by the adult learner, the fear of aging, rather than the aging process itself, may induce mental deterioration (Horvath & Horvath, 1952). While physical functioning may decline gradually, physical appearance may deteriorate at a rate that can make one feel older (Biehler & Hudson, 1986).
35. True. Warren (1961) contends that adults are even more sensitive than children to failure in their learning situations and that previous unfavorable experiences with education may cause fears and self-doubts about ability (Comfort, 1974).
36. True. In general adults come to the learning situation with a high readiness to learn, but they need answers that relate directly to their lives (Axford, 1980).
37. False. Many adults still harbor doubts about their personal learning ability. For adults to undertake a return to school or an in-depth learning project is for them to move into unknown territory, regardless of their educational level and personal resources (Smith, 1982).
38. True. The way adults organize their perceptions and what they select to perceive are influenced by expectations. It is more difficult to change the perceptions of an adult than those of a child, as the adult has had more experience than a child (Whitbourne 1986; Zahn, 1967).
39. True. The tasks an individual must learn--the developmental tasks of life--are those things that constitute healthy and satisfactory growth in our society. They are excellent starting points to identify educational needs of adults (Cross, 1981; Whitbourne, 1986). Brundage and Mackeracher (1980) indicate that adults are strongly motivated to learn in areas relevant to their current developmental tasks, social roles, life crises, and transition periods.
40. False. Adults actually have more emotional associations with factual material than do children. The devices of control are more elaborate and better covered in the adult (Murphy, l9S5). Whitbourne (1986) has ~indicated that emotions and attitudes influence the ways in which aiindividuals learn new information.
41. True. Most would agree that as one ages, time seems to pass more quickly. For a youngster of six, one year is one-sixth of a lifetime. For a youth of sixteen, a year is one-sixteenth of life. For a man of forty, a year is one-fortieth of his life, and at seventy merely one seventieth of the years lived (McClusky, 1963).
42. False. As Havighurst (1972) points out, life consists of many developmental periods. Smith (1982) has observed that adults pass through a number of developmental phases in the physical, psychological, and social spheres.
43. False. Lewin says that to the child the future is vague but just ahead, to the adolescent vague but unlimited; adults, however, have a realistic attitude toward time which sharply differentiates their perspective from the outlook of youth (McClusky, 1963, p. 18). Neugarten (1963) and Long (1983) believe that there comes a point, usually in the middle years, when the individual realizes that time is not infinite and that the self will die. Along with this realization may come an end to measuring one's lifetime from the date of one's birth, and, instead, a beginning to measuring it by the distance to one's death.
44. False. There are many different notions about motivation and its influence on learning. Most would agree that intrinsic motivation is far more important than extrinsic motivation, especially when dealing with ~ adult learners in noncredit situations (Wlodkowski, 1984; Verner & Davison, 1971). Darkenwald and Merriam (19823 surmise that intrinsic motivation produces more persuasive and permanent learning.
