Logical Reasoning

PT104 · S1 · Q18 Astronauts who experience weightlessness

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Astronauts who experience weightlessness frequently get motion sickness.

Curious Fact

Why do weightless astronauts frequently get motion sickness?

Hypothesis (best explained by)

Their brains are getting conflicting information. They see they're moving, but their inner ears indicate they're not moving.

Evidence

Conflicting received by the brain about the body's motion causes motion sickness.

Evaluate

This is an Explain Curious Fact pattern, where the curious phenomenon is that astronauts experience motion sickness in weightless conditions. The author explains this with the hypothesis that conflicting information between visual and inner ear signals causes motion sickness.

Almost always, we strengthen a hypothesis by adding some plausibility to it (usually in "no cause, no effect" form), but occasionally we do so by ruling out an alternate explanation.

"No cause, no effect" in this case would be something like, .

Goal

Let's find an answer that provides additional support for the hypothesis that conflicting sensory information causes motion sickness (or that rules out an alternate explanation).

18.

Which one of the following, if true, provides the strongest additional support for the hypothesis above?

  1. Correct

    During rough voyages ship passengers

    Why this is right

    This strengthens the plausibility by showing when the cause is present, the effect is present; and when the cause is absent, the effect is absent. Passengers on a boat that is traveling over rough waters will all FEEL that their bodies are moving. The passengers who have a view of water can also see that they're moving. They don't have conflicting information, and they don't have motion sickness (no cause, no effect). Meanwhile, the passengers in a cabin with no view (it's just four windowless walls), will feel their bodies moving but won't be able to see that they're moving. They have conflicting information, and they have motion sickness.

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

    71% picked this

  2. Many people who are experienced

    Unclear Impact

    There's no common sense link between being an experienced airplane passenger and whether or not you have conflicting sensory information. People on planes presumably feel that they're moving (the plane vibrates and sometimes goes up and down from turbulence). A window seat would help the eyes also see movement, whereas an aisle seat might not be able to see movement. So there's potential for conflicting sensory info, but it depends on your seat, and this answer doesn't inform us where these people are sitting.

    4% picked this

  3. Some automobile passengers whose inner

    Opposite (if anything)

    These people feel that they're moving and can see they're moving but still get motion sickness. They don't have conflicting sensory information, and yet they're getting motion sickness. So this is a very mild weakener (because of "some") since it shows Effect w/o Cause.

    19% picked this

  4. People who have aisle seats

    Opposite Impact

    Window seats allow people to see the motion that their bodies are feeling, whereas aisle seats generally don't allow people to see the motion their bodies are feeling. Since one group has conflicting sensory information and the other group doesn't, the author's hypothesis would predict that one group is more likely to get motion sickness than the other. So the fact that they're no different would weaken this hypothesis.

    6% picked this

  5. Some astronauts do not get

    No Impact

    This is an extremely weak idea ("at least one astronaut"), so it's very unlikely to be correct on a Str / Wkn / Paradox question. This has no way of helping us to argue that conflicting sensory information causes motion sickness in astronauts. These astronauts aren't even getting motion sickness.

    1% picked this

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