PrepTest 151, Section 4, Question 10
Researcher: Overhearing only one side of a cell-phone(39 more words not shown)
The researcher's statements, if true,(8 more words not shown)
- AThe risk that(17 more words not shown)
- BWhen a driver(18 more words not shown)
- COverhearing one side(16 more words not shown)
- DPeople who overhear(12 more words not shown)
- EConversing on a(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Your attention may wander toward the half of the conversation you can't hear.
Imagine someone nearby saying something on a phone, then pausing to listen. You can hear that person's words but not the reply. According to the researcher, listeners keep trying to fill those gaps, which pulls attention away from their own tasks. The unusually loud talking adds another distraction.
What we’re looking for
We're asked what these statements most strongly support. There are several possible applications, so I wouldn't try to predict one exact setting. I'd keep the basic relationship in mind: overhearing one side of a cell-phone conversation interferes with the listener's attention to something else.
Working the answers
- A
Here the driver is participating in the phone conversation. The researcher's claim concerns someone overhearing another person's conversation. Those are different roles. Whatever we might independently believe about a driver's own phone use, this passage hasn't established the accident-risk claim in A.
- BCorrect
This puts the driver in the role the researcher actually describes: a listener overhearing one side of someone else's call. The passenger's conversation draws attention away from the driver's task, which supports the conclusion that it detracts from driving performance. B applies the stated distraction to a particular activity without switching the listener into the person making the call.
- C
The passage doesn't say traditional telephones are free of this effect. In fact, the effort to guess unheard replies isn't explained by anything uniquely cellular; it comes from hearing only part of a conversation. We don't have to prove exactly what happens with a traditional phone to reject C. The researcher simply hasn't supplied the claimed absence of distraction.
- D
Having attention diverted doesn't necessarily mean losing track of one's thoughts entirely. Someone might notice the conversation and be less focused while still remembering what they were thinking about. D makes an inevitable, stronger consequence out of the more limited distraction described.
- E
The listener is guessing words that cannot be heard. E instead discusses a participant guessing what their own conversational partner means. The participant can hear that partner, and the researcher hasn't compared that person's interpretive effort with other forms of conversation. Keep the overhearer and the person on the call separate.
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