Logical Reasoning

PT103 · S2 · Q18 Each child in a group of young

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Each child in a group of young children read aloud both a short paragraph and a list of randomly ordered words from the paragraph.

Given that ...

The order of the task made a difference for more experienced readers.

How can we explain that ...

For the beginning readers, the order of the task made no difference (they always made fewer errors when reading the paragraph than when reading the list)?

Evaluate / Goal

We seem to want to address two different distinctions:

- why are beginning readers more likely to make pronunciation errors when reading a list than when reading a paragraph?

- how come this reason didn't also apply to the more experienced readers?

18.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the order in which the tasks were performed was not significant for the beginning readers?

Because several words were used
Deepens Paradox
If the list is shorter than the paragraph, than one has less chance to make errors when reading the list. Thus, this answer goes in the opposite direction of what we need, which is a way to explain more errors when reading the list vs. the paragraph.
13% picked this
In reading the paragraph, the
Deepens Paradox, if anything
This answer is telling us that the more experienced readers were better at employing a "secret weapon" to help them with reading the paragraph. This doesn't help us explain why the beginners were better at the paragraph than at the list. After all, this answer is saying "the beginners weren't as good at using X to help them while reading the paragraph."
8% picked this
Correct
The more experienced readers sounded
Why this is right
This helps us address both of the distinctions we were trying to explain: - why are beginning readers more likely to make pronunciation errors when reading a list than when reading a paragraph? Because when the beginners read a paragraph they can use context to guess at difficult words. Lists of words offer no context (or at least much less context), so context won't help them guess difficult words, and difficult words are likely to be a source of pronunciation errors. Did the beginners have a different way to guess at difficult words when it came to reading the list? No, they relied solely on context for guessing. - how come this reason didn't also apply to the more experienced readers? The more experienced readers were sounding out difficult words, so they did better on whatever they performed second, because the difficult words they encountered during their second task overlapped with difficult words they had already practiced sounding out during their first task.
Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
61% picked this
Both tasks used the same
No Impact / No Distinction
We already knew that both tasks used the same words, because the first sentence of the paragraph tells us as much. This answer doesn't offer any distinguishing trait between the list and the paragraph, so it offers us no mechanism for explaining why beginners were better at one than the other.
13% picked this
The beginning readers made more
No Impact / No Distinction
We weren't already told this yet, but we probably already assumed that the beginners made more errors than the experienced readers, since that's a common sense distinction between "beginner / more advanced". Our paradox has nothing to do with comparing the number of errors of one group to that of the other. It's all about, within the group of beginning readers, why were fewer errors made when reading from a paragraph than when reading from a list. This answer choice offers no distinction between paragraph / list.
6% picked this

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