PrepTest 120, Section 1, Question 26
Researchers gave 100 first-graders after-school lessons in handwriting.(33 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- AAmong the first-graders(19 more words not shown)
- BThe first-graders who(26 more words not shown)
- COver the course(25 more words not shown)
- DBefore receiving the(27 more words not shown)
- EAmong the first-graders(24 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Writing a letter automatically means you don't have to stop and think through each stroke. Your hand does something familiar while you focus on what you want to say. That's different from composition: choosing words, constructing sentences, and expressing ideas.
The researchers think improvement in that first skill leaves more attention available for the second. I can see how that might work. But what if some children were already better at both tasks? Or what if improved composition helped them become more comfortable writing letters? Finding the two abilities together doesn't establish which change produced the other.
Even improvement over time needs some care. First-graders are developing in lots of ways. We shouldn't automatically credit the lessons for every change they show.
What we’re looking for
We're asked to strengthen the researchers' particular explanation: automatic handwriting frees up mental resources. I'd like evidence connecting the handwriting improvement with the ability to do more of the thinking involved in composition. Let's see whether the answers help us make that connection.
Working the answers
- A
Practice helps children make their handwriting more automatic. That explains how they might develop the handwriting skill, but not what having that skill does for composition. We need support for the next step: does automatic letter formation free attention for other work?
- B
This identifies the children who improved most in composition by looking at their starting handwriting skill. It doesn't tell us whether they became more automatic writers during the lessons. They might have started with other advantages that helped their composition improve. C more directly connects changes in the two abilities, which is what the proposed explanation leads us to expect.
- CCorrect
The children who made greater gains in automatic handwriting generally made greater gains in composition too. That pattern fits the proposed mechanism: as forming the letters demands less attention, more attention becomes available for deciding what words to use and how to put ideas together.
This doesn't prove what happened inside the children's minds. Another factor might contribute to both improvements. But tracking improvement in one skill alongside improvement in the other gives the researchers more support than simply identifying children who were already strong at one task. A strengthener can help the explanation without proving it completely.
- D
A representative group would help us decide how widely the results might apply. It doesn't settle why these abilities go together within the group. Even a perfectly representative sample could leave open whether automatic handwriting frees mental resources or whether some other factor explains the results.
- E
The children who already composed well improved in automatic handwriting. That leaves open the direction we questioned: perhaps stronger composition helps with handwriting, or perhaps those children have another advantage. It doesn't establish that becoming a more automatic writer helped their composition. Nor should we treat E as proof of the reverse explanation.
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