Logical Reasoning

PT101 · S2 · Q4 Because quitting smoking is very

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Because quitting smoking is very stressful and leads to weight gain, it is difficult to do.

Conclusion (implicit recommendation)

The key to quitting smoking may be as simple as replacing an unhealthy activity with a healthy one.

Evidence

It's hard to quit smoking because it's very stressful and leads to weight gain.

In a study of people trying to quit smoking, half were assigned to a smoking-cessation program alone, and half were assigned to the same program plus fifteen weeks of aerobic exercise.

After one month, no one in the first group had quit but 40% of the second group had not smoked.

Evaluate

The conclusion is hard to find and being pretty coy about what it's saying. What are they referring to with "replacing an unhealthy activity with a healthy one"?

Well, in the study, people were trying to quit their unhealthy smoking, and people who were in the group that did some aerobic exercise had more success ceasing their smoking.

So the conclusion is saying, .

Since the argument is presenting a Study, we'd anticipate that the author is going to make some sort of causal assumption about the study's findings, and so we can use our Explain Curious Fact mindset.

Curious Fact ... why did a bigger share of the group that was assigned "program + aerobics" quit smoking, compared to the group that was just assigned "program"?

Author's Explanation ... the aerobics helped them quit smoking.

Goal

We know we can strengthen an Explain Curious Fact argument two ways:

1. rule out an Alternate Explanation for why the group that did aerobics fared better

2. add to the plausibility that the aerobic exercise helped people in that group quit

But since our conclusion also goes broader than simply "aerobic exercise helps you quit smoking" and says , we could also strengthen the argument by providing other examples of healthy activities helping someone quit an unhealthy activity.

4.

Each of the following, if true, provides some support for the argument EXCEPT:

  1. Regular exercise prevents weight gain.

    Strengthens

    This adds some plausibility to the idea that exercising could help someone quit smoking. But to see this, we need to notice the Breadcrumb detail in the first sentence. It tells us that quitting smoking is hard because it leads to weight gain and stress. So anything that helps people stave off stress or weight gain could potentially make it easier to quit smoking.

    9% picked this

  2. Each group in the study

    Strengthens

    This answer just improves the credibility / trustworthiness of the study. Studies have more gravitas if they're conducted on a large number of people who are randomly selected. Small numbers / self-selection bias can lead to skewed results. If we had found out that there were only 4 people in the study, we'd be like, "Psssh --- get this shallow pool of data points away from me. We shouldn't infer anything from this." So being told that each group that 400 hundred random people is reassuring to us, in terms of trusting this study's scope and methodology.

    10% picked this

  3. Correct

    Nonsmokers accustomed to regular exercise

    Why this is right

    This is talking about nonsmokers, so it has no impact. We're trying to strengthen the idea that smokers could more easily quit smoking if they replaced it with a healthy activity like aerobic exercise. Hearing about what happens to nonsmokers when they quit exercising is totally irrelevant to this conversation.

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    73% picked this

  4. Aerobic exercise can stimulate the

    Strengthens

    This adds some plausibility to the idea that exercising could help someone quit smoking. But to see this, like (A), we need to notice the Breadcrumb detail in the first sentence. It tells us that quitting smoking is hard because it leads to weight gain and stress. So anything that helps people stave off stress or weight gain could potentially make it easier to quit smoking. This answer is saying that exercise can help to stave off stress (it "reduces tension").

    3% picked this

  5. Of those in the second

    Strengthens

    This answer improves the credibility / trustworthiness of the study. The study showed at after one month the group doing aerobic exercise was having more luck quitting smoking. But what if that's just a fleeting hiccup, and people relapse into being smokers after a month or two? This answer rules out that possibility, informing us that the "quitting-power" of doing the aerobic exercise seems to have staying power. After 1 month, 40% of that group had quit, and after 1 year, 38% were still not smoking (only 2% of them quit and then started smoking again). That's makes it sound like aerobic exercise is a long-term solution for those who were able to quit during the study.

    5% picked this

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