PrepTest 146, Section 1, Question 10
Anthropologist: In an experiment, two groups of undergraduates(84 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AApart from the(20 more words not shown)
- BThe students who(24 more words not shown)
- CThe tools that(21 more words not shown)
- DThe instructor who(31 more words not shown)
- EThe tools created(28 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
These are college students, not Neanderthals. Showing that today's students can learn a task by watching doesn't automatically show how Neanderthals could have developed their tools without language.
Even for the students, what does 'silent example' rule out? Maybe the instructor stayed quiet, but a student could ask a classmate, 'Did you catch the next step? I missed it.' If the students helped one another verbally, the silent demonstration wouldn't show that language played no part in their learning.
There is also a difference between carrying out the physical steps and reaching the point where a society can make these tools at all. Language might have helped with the activities that made toolmaking possible, even if an individual demonstration could be silent. The experiment leaves those possibilities open.
What we’re looking for
For the weaken question, I'd look for evidence that language still helped the supposedly silent group. Students talking among themselves would give us a concrete reason to question the conclusion.
Working the answers
- A
Having language isn't the same as needing it for this task. Neanderthals might have possessed a language and still been capable of making the tools without it. Evidence that they actually spoke doesn't show that the no-language possibility in the conclusion is wrong.
- B
This goes against our prediction. The silent group wasn't allowed to discuss the techniques, so B closes the possibility that those students relied on verbal help from classmates. The group with that extra opportunity still didn't learn faster or become more proficient. That doesn't establish the full claim about Neanderthals, but it gives us less reason to attribute the silent group's success to conversation.
- CCorrect
Here's another problem: the experiment used easy tools, but the conclusion covers the Neanderthals' sophisticated tools. Learning the easier task by watching doesn't establish that watching would work equally well for the harder tasks. More complicated techniques might require verbal explanation even if the simple technique didn't.
Imagine teaching someone to tie their shoes without speaking. That doesn't show they could learn the most complicated knots in a scouting manual just as easily without words. The difficulty of the task matters. C exposes the same mismatch between what the students demonstrated and what the anthropologist concludes.
- D
The silent group succeeded despite having the less proficient instructor. That doesn't give us a reason to think silent teaching was inadequate; if anything, it makes that group's equal performance more striking. We're told the students actually reached the same proficiency, so we can't treat the instructor's lower skill as evidence that they failed to learn.
- E
This compares Neanderthal tools with the more sophisticated tools of anatomically modern humans living at the same time. It doesn't establish whether language was needed for the Neanderthals' tools. The fact that another group had language and made harder tools doesn't tell us that these particular tools required language, or explain why the experiment fails to support that claim.
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