Final answer:
The statement is false; a phrenologist studies the shape and size of the cranium, not facial features. Phrenology, now considered pseudoscience, once suggested personality traits could be discerned from cranial bumps.
Step-by-step explanation:
The answer to the student's question is False. A phrenologist does not study the shape of one's facial features but rather the shape and size of the cranium. Phrenology was a pseudoscientific practice developed in the early nineteenth century, primarily by Franz Joseph Gall, which suggested that the various bumps on the skull reflect the individual's personality traits, character, and mental abilities. This practice was associated with the field that would eventually develop into modern psychology.
Phrenology aimed to map out thirty-seven "faculties" of the mind, each related to different characteristics or abilities, by examining the contours of the skull. Despite its initial popularity in the 1820s and the following decades, phrenology's lack of empirical support ultimately led to it being discredited. While phrenology itself is now dismissed as pseudoscience, the notion that different parts of the brain have different functions did contribute to the scientific understanding of the brain.