Logical Reasoning

PT103 · S1 · Q19 Sponges attach to the ocean floor

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Sponges attach to the ocean floor, continually filtering seawater for food and ejecting water they have just filtered to avoid reingesting it.

Statements

Sponges attached to the bottom of the ocean let seawater in, filter it, and then eject the water they've just filtered away from where their water intake is.

causal (and thus are) Tube/vase sponges don't need help from moving water to send that ejected water away, which is why they're adapted to slow-moving quiet waters.

causal (because of their shape) The tube/vase shape causes strong currents to dislodge them from the ocean floor.

conditional (cannot live) Strong current → tube/vase sponge can't live

Tube/vase sponges were widespread during the late Jurassic period.

Evaluate

With this many claims, it's impossible to know exactly where the answer might pull support from, but when we see Conditional / Causal / Mathematical / Pivot indicator words, that's usually a clue.

And if we can find any Overlapping Concepts, that's also a clue about which claims will be combined.

There's a pivot (however) in the second to last claim as well as a conditional (cannot). So that claim sticks out as being spicier.

When we see Conditionals on Inference questions, we always have two specific questions on our mind:

1. Are there other conditionals that I could chain this one up with? (not in this case; this was the only conditional)

2. Is there some fact that I can apply this conditional to (usually via contrapositive)?

Yes! The contrapositive of the conditional was this:

if tube/vase sponges → then not strong are living currents

We know that both tube and vase sponges were widespread during the late Jurassic, so we can apply that conditional and derive that "not strong currents" were widespread during the late Jurassic.

The tube/vase sponge overlaps with other claims too. We learn that they are well adapted to slow waters because they don't need help from a fast moving current to eject their post-filtered water. But we also learn that they are poorly adapted to strong currents, because those would dislodge them from the ocean floor.

So we could see an answer synthesizing those two facts about the pace of the surrounding water ... i.e. .

Goal

The most likely suspect would be applying the conditional, via contrapositive, to the final sentence, to derive that .

But stay flexible and look for the most provable answer.

19.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following claims?

  1. Few tubular or vase-shaped sponges

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: before late Jurassic Only One Mentioned ? Only One We don't have any information about life before the late Jurassic period. Just because late Jurassic is the only "widespread tube/vase sponge" period mentioned doesn't mean it's the only "widespread tube/vase sponge" period.

    1% picked this

  2. Tubular and vase-shaped sponges were

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: succeeding eras Only One Mentioned ? Only One Relative vs. Absolute Just like (A), we don't have any information about life before/after the late Jurassic period. This answer is trying to make students think, "If they said it was widespread during period X, then it must not have been widespread during periods Y and Z." Just because late Jurassic is the only "widespread tube/vase sponge" period that gets mentioned doesn't mean it's the only "widespread tube/vase sponge" period. I can say that "Cocaine was widespread in the 1970s". That doesn't mean that "cocaine was more widespread in the 1970s than in the 1980s."

    5% picked this

  3. Correct

    During the late Jurassic period

    Why this is right

    This aligns with our main prediction. We know that tube/vase sponges were widespread during the late Jurassic period, and we know that they can't live anywhere with strong currents. So there must have been widespread "not-strong currents". That's all this answer is saying. It gives an even weaker version of what we know. We know that weaker currents were widespread, so we can definitely support that many weaker current areas existed. Why is this talking about the ocean floor? Because that where sponges live.

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

    88% picked this

  4. All sponges that are neither

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: other sponges Only One Mentioned ? Only One Too Strong = extremely strong We don't have any information about other types of sponges. We only talked about strong currents; we don't have any information about the more-specific extremely strong currents. This answer, like (A) and (B), wants us to assume the opposite about stuff that was not mentioned. If the passage said, "children of Irish descent love their parents", these trap answers would be saying "children of non-Irish descent don't love their parents / love their parents less". We were told tube/vase sponges can't handle strong currents. That does not allow us to infer that "non-tube/vase sponges can handle strong currents".

    4% picked this

  5. No types of sponge live

    Too Strong: no types

    We can stop reading this four words in. We only received information about tube/vase sponges, other than the general claims in the first sentence that sponges are attached to the ocean floor and filter water. Although this answer makes some speculative sense (you don't want to be ingesting the waste water from a neighboring sponge that's too close to you), we can't support such an extreme universal: no type of sponge (anywhere / ever!) lives in a large colony.

    1% picked this

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