PrepTest 142, Section 4, Question 11
A university professor researching sleep disorders occasionally taught(65 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(9 more words not shown)
- AThe subjective effects(14 more words not shown)
- BNo one can(18 more words not shown)
- CSleep deprivation has(15 more words not shown)
- DOccasional sleep deprivation(8 more words not shown)
- EUniversity students in(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
She could feel the difference. Most of her students couldn't identify it.
The professor felt exhausted, struggled to concentrate, and had trouble finding words after staying up all night. Yet when students looked back over her lectures, very few could identify which ones followed sleepless nights. Her experience was much more noticeable to her than to them.
Why might that happen? Perhaps she usually had a reserved lecturing style, so feeling humorless didn't produce an obvious contrast. Perhaps she managed to appear energetic despite feeling awful. Or maybe students were distracted by their laptops and weren't watching closely. Those are possibilities; the passage doesn't select one.
What we’re looking for
For the strongest-supported statement, stay with the contrast the evidence actually gives us: a noticeable internal experience without a comparably noticeable change for the audience. We can recognize that pattern without proving why students missed it.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
'Subjective' concerns how the professor felt; 'overt behavior' concerns what others could observe. Her reported experience changed enough to make lecturing difficult, while most students couldn't identify the affected lectures. That supports the idea that occasional sleep deprivation can feel more pronounced than it looks.
This is the best-supported statement, not proof that sleep loss never affects visible behavior or that every observer would miss it.
- B
'No one' is far too strong. These students' difficulty doesn't establish that a specialist, a close colleague, or some other observer couldn't assess the effects as well as the professor. It also doesn't establish who could best judge every aspect of the overall effects.
- C
We haven't compared professors with people in other jobs. Also, a change going unnoticed doesn't mean there was no effect on performance. She reported real difficulty lecturing even though the students couldn't reliably identify those occasions.
- D
The passage discusses occasional sleepless nights, not an extended period without adequate sleep. It gives us no comparison between the two, so we can't rank how debilitating they are.
- E
The students' inability to identify these lectures doesn't establish that they are especially perceptive observers. Nor does it prove they are generally poor observers; the outward differences might simply have been subtle. We have evidence about this contrast, not a general assessment of students' observational skill.
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