PrepTest 114, Section 2, Question 9
During the three months before and the three(81 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- ABefore the California(17 more words not shown)
- BThe students in(18 more words not shown)
- CBefore they started(17 more words not shown)
- DThe students in(14 more words not shown)
- EThe students in(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
How many California students dreamed about earthquakes before this one happened?
An experience entering a dream sounds plausible. After spending a lot of time on LSAT questions, for instance, I could imagine dreaming about the test. But the California result gives us the after figure: half of the students reported earthquake dreams. I'd still want to know whether that was an increase.
The Ontario comparison adds useful information, but it raises another question. Was personally experiencing the earthquake what mattered, or could news coverage and conversations about it have prompted the dreams? A student might think about an earthquake after hearing about it without having felt the shaking. That possibility would leave us less certain about the particular cause the author identifies.
What we’re looking for
For a strengthener, my main prediction is evidence connecting the dreams more closely to being present for the earthquake. Perhaps only those who experienced it had the dreams, or perhaps we could rule out the alternative involving news coverage. The answer may also address the earlier question about what changed in California.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This returns to the before-and-after question. Before the earthquake, the California group had no more students recording earthquake dreams than the Ontario group did. The Ontario reports were almost nonexistent, whereas half of the California students reported them after experiencing the earthquake.
That makes a preexisting difference between the groups a less satisfying explanation of the later pattern. We now have evidence of a change associated with the California event, which strengthens the proposed connection. It doesn't rule out every other influence around the same time, but strengthening doesn't require that.
Keep the numbers precise: almost none is not necessarily zero. We don't need to turn the result into an exact zero-to-50-percent change to see why the added baseline helps.
- B
This introduces a difference in how the groups were thinking about dreams and remembering them. A dream-recollection class might make students more attentive to what they dreamed. That offers another possible reason the reporting patterns could differ, rather than isolating the effect of personally experiencing the earthquake.
- C
Earlier earthquakes don't tell us what caused the dreams recorded during this study. We would still need to know how those earlier experiences relate to the reports. C doesn't show that this earthquake changed the students' dreaming or remove the other possible influences.
- D
More dreams overall is different from more dreams about earthquakes. The Ontario students could report many dreams about other topics while the question about the California group's earthquake dreams remained open. D doesn't tell us whether that group's earthquake dreams increased after the event or why the groups differed on that topic.
- E
These Ontario students hadn't experienced an earthquake, so their later dreams don't support a direct link to personal experience. Perhaps hearing about the California event mattered to them. We don't know the cause, and this small group doesn't disprove that experiencing an earthquake can prompt dreams. But its timing doesn't provide the needed support for that particular explanation.
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