PrepTest 111, Section 4, Question 8
It is widely believed that by age 80,(54 more words not shown)
The reasoning above is most(14 more words not shown)
- Athe study's card(11 more words not shown)
- Bcard games are(11 more words not shown)
- Cperception and memory(11 more words not shown)
- Dthe belief that(12 more words not shown)
- Eplaying the study's(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if the game is easy enough for both groups to play perfectly?
Imagine showing someone the ace of spades and immediately asking which card they saw. Two people could both answer correctly even if one could remember much more information than the other. Their equal result on that simple task wouldn't establish equal memory capacity.
The same issue would arise if a young child and an adult both remembered one card. We wouldn't use that single result to conclude their abilities were equal in every more demanding task. A test has to be demanding enough to reveal the difference we're investigating.
What we’re looking for
Here, the author uses equal performance on one game to reject a claim about significant changes in perception and memory. For the flaw question, I'd look for a reason the game could miss those changes. Perhaps the task is too easy, so both age groups can do equally well despite having different levels of the abilities being tested.
Working the answers
- A
Other cognitive abilities aren't the subject of the conclusion. The author is challenging a claim about perception and memory, so testing those abilities is appropriate. The concern is whether this test distinguishes levels of those abilities, not whether it measures every other mental skill too.
- B
This doesn't support the concern that the task is too easy. If the relevant game were highly demanding, equal performance might be more informative about the participants' abilities. A broad claim that card games are among the hardest tasks also doesn't identify a specific weakness in this study's comparison.
- C
An unknown connection between perception and memory doesn't, by itself, explain why equal game performance could conceal a difference between the age groups. We would need to know what the connection does to the test results. C mentions complexity without showing how it undermines this inference.
- D
A belief's origin doesn't establish whether it is true. Even if prejudice helped produce the belief, we would still need to evaluate the claim about the two abilities. D also doesn't explain a weakness in using this particular card game to reject that belief.
- ECorrect
If perfect play requires only fairly low levels of perception and memory, both groups could meet that threshold even after a significant decline in the older group's abilities. Equal scores would then tell us only that both groups can do this easy task.
Think back to remembering one card. Someone could lose much of their ability to remember a long sequence and still remember that one card perfectly. The study could therefore produce exactly the reported result while the belief the author rejects remained true.
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