PrepTest 149, Section 3, Question 9
As regards memory, the brain responds best to(73 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(5 more words not shown)
- Ajokes, unlike music,(11 more words not shown)
- Bsome successful jokes(10 more words not shown)
- Cjokes work not(9 more words not shown)
- Dfor most people,(7 more words not shown)
- Epeople can hold(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The emotional response isn't the feature the passage credited with helping memory. The repeated pattern is.
Think of knowing the words to a song while struggling to recall the exact wording of a page of prose. The passage explains that advantage through melody and rhythm. Putting a long string of words to music gives us a pattern to follow; simply feeling something about the words hasn't been identified as the helpful ingredient.
What we’re looking for
So jokes and music can both provoke emotion without being equally memorable. To complete the explanation, I'd expect a difference involving those repeated patterns. Perhaps jokes don't supply the kind of repetition that helps us remember songs. The blank needs to explain why the emotional similarity doesn't produce the same memory benefit.
Working the answers
- A
Verbal content isn't established as the obstacle. The passage explicitly says long strings of information or text become easier to remember when set to music. So having words or symbols doesn't explain why jokes lack the musical memory advantage. We need the relevant difference in how the material is organized.
- B
Length alone isn't the distinction the passage develops. It has already described remembering long strings when music provides a pattern. Some jokes being short and others long doesn't explain why jokes generally remain difficult to remember or why the comparison with music fails.
- CCorrect
Music supplies repeated patterns, while jokes work by breaking them. That distinguishes the feature identified as useful for memory, even though both can produce an emotional response. We aren't saying jokes have no structure at all. The point is that their effect comes from departing from an expected pattern rather than following the repetitions that make music helpful here.
- D
A memory producing emotion is different from emotion helping us form or retain that memory. D tells us how people react to certain things they remember, not why jokes are harder to remember than musical text. It doesn't provide the missing contrast.
- E
This gives a limit on short-term memory for unpatterned material, but it doesn't tell us that jokes are the unpatterned material or explain how they differ from music. It also shifts the focus to how many chunks can be held at once. C directly supplies the contrast involving the repeated patterns that the passage has used to explain memory.
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