PrepTest 147, Section 4, Question 14
Psychology researchers observed that parents feel emotion while(97 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(8 more words not shown)
- AA separate study(22 more words not shown)
- BSome, but not(15 more words not shown)
- CParents displayed little(9 more words not shown)
- DWhen a person(15 more words not shown)
- EMost of the(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Could the psychologists have heard the baby? If a recording contains crying or another background cue, a listener might identify the baby's presence without detecting any change in the parent's singing. That would explain the correct guesses without proving what the researchers want to prove.
There are other questions too. A parent could feel emotion while thinking about a baby who isn't in the room.
And how many recordings produced that 80 percent? Four out of five would be much less impressive than 400 out of 500. We aren't told that the sample was tiny; we just shouldn't let a percentage answer every question about the study.
What we’re looking for
To strengthen the argument, I'd like to connect the listeners' success to an actual effect of emotion on the singing. Ruling out other audible clues would help. Let's see what the choices give us.
Working the answers
- A
The experiment compares singing with the parent's infant present to singing with no infant present. A compares singing to one's own child with singing to someone else's child. That different comparison doesn't show that emotion changed the sound in these recordings.
- B
Knowing that some parents realized they were recorded doesn't tell us what difference that awareness made. Did they sing differently? Were they aware during both recordings or only one? We would need additional information to connect this fact to the researchers' explanation of the listeners' success.
- C
This tells us about emotion when the parents sing alone. It still doesn't establish whether emotion noticeably changed their sound. Even if the emotions differed in the two settings, listeners might have relied on background noises rather than changes in singing. C doesn't supply the connection as directly as D does.
- DCorrect
Here is a way emotion can affect the voice: it triggers involuntary physical responses in the vocal cords and lungs. That gives us a reason to expect a difference in singing even when parents try to make the renditions identical. It isn't the exact answer I predicted about removing other audible clues, and it doesn't prove what every listener heard. It supports the researchers' explanation by supplying a mechanism for the change they claim occurred.
- E
The parents believe emotion affected their singing. That belief doesn't establish that their singing actually changed in a noticeable way. They might expect emotion to affect their voices without being able to tell whether it did. D gives a physical connection rather than another person's belief in the hypothesis.
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