Reading Comprehension

PT121 · S2 · P4 · Q20 Leading Questions

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Leading questions—questions worded in such a way as to suggest a particular answer—can yield unreliable testimony either by design, as when a lawyer tries to trick a witness into affirming a particular version of the evidence of a case, or by accident, when a questioner unintentionally prejudices the witness’s response.

Topic

Leading questions

Framework

Problem / Solution, or Old / New

The passage is primarily about the Problem of leading questions, but there isn't a Solution discussed.

And the passage is primarily about our New, better understanding of the danger of leading questions, but there's not much time spent on our Old mindset of knowing-less about leading questions / not seeing them as problematic.

Main Point

NEW/PROBLEM Recent studies are making us more aware of some problematic aspects of leading questions and of the underlying conditions that give rise to these problems.

Summary

P1 - Intro to Topic, Pivot into Problem

The author introduces us to leading questions and establishes that while leading question re a known problem in the courtroom (which is why judges may disallow them), they are a less-appreciated problem outside the courtroom. The "But" in the middle of this paragraph is one of those classic Author Pivot moments that pulls into focus the foreground of what we'll be discussing.

P2 - New research findings on leading questions

This paragraph presents our emerging understanding from new research, about how leading questions asked pre-courtroom could still bias witness testimony. Our memories have fuzzy details and incomplete details, and new information contained in a leading question that doesn't conflict with our memory will basically be absorbed into our memory. An example is provided in which an eyewitness comes to have a belief about a stop sign via a leading question.

The first sentence of this paragraph has the famous Author Pivot word of "Recent", and this sentence ultimately seems like our closest thing to a Main Point sentence.

P3 - Further implications of New research

This paragraph just continues to flesh out the research findings. It emphasizes that those fuzzy details are usually things that are distant in time and weren't super germane to the original memory. Since we're most likely to be misled by leading questions when it comes to tangential details like someone's shoes, or car, or hair, etc. the fact that many eyewitnesses are relied upon to give identifying testimony regarding small details like that highlights the danger of how leading questions could have important ramifications.

20.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?

The unreliability of memories about
Wrong Emphasis
This gets too narrowly attuned to one subsidiary point. The central topic of this passage is "leading questions", and this answer doesn't even mention leading questions.
3% picked this
Correct
Because of the nature of
Why this is right
The main clause of this answer is calling out the Problem: leading questions that happen farther upstream than the trial itself. It's saying "courtroom testimony may contain crucial inaccuracies due to leading questions asked prior to the trial". The introductory clause is prefaced by a Causal Connector ("Because"). We need to vet the accuracy of this causal connection being claimed. Did the passage say that the nature of human memory storage and retrieval is why we're vulnerable to leading questions? Sure, the bulk of the 2nd paragraph was talking about memory storage and retrieval. And the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph is framing this discussion as "a better understanding of how this process [of leading questions altering our memories] occurs".
Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
83% picked this
Researchers are surprised to find
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: researchers' surprise Out of Scope: insufficient attention to detail We should probably be suspicious of this answer immediately because it lacks the central topic of the passage: leading questions. It is using the term "suggestion", which could be a proxy for leading questions, but you normally don't see a correct main point answer talk its way around using the actual main noun of the passage. Nothing in the passage matches well with the claim that researchers were surprised. This passage seems to take place in a time where we already understand the potential human vulnerability to leading questions (because they are already barred from courtrooms). The passage isn't breaking news that "courtroom testimony is often [affected] by the suggestion inherent in leading questions". It's simply updating the story by saying, "we're starting to learn even more about how this whole thing works". Finally, the final paragraph is not saying that witnesses are paying "insufficient attention to detail", which sounds somewhat accusatory. It's saying that eyewitnesses often paid little attention to certain details that understandably wouldn't have been important to a person in the moment of witnessing a crime, but become important details in the context of a trial.
2% picked this
Although judges can disallow leading
Too Strong: virtually impossible Too Narrow
This is appealing, since it centers itself on the Problem, but it also very strongly worded in saying "it is virtually impossible to prevent them from being used elsewhere". And the passage is highlighting the fact that leading questions may be used during questioning that precedes a trial (outside of the courtroom). But this answer choice really only addresses the content of the 1st paragraph. The author doesn't spend the whole passage discussing possible prevention methods and then deeming the problem "virtually impossible" to solve. Instead, she spends the rest of the passage discussing nuances of our emerging understanding of how leading questions work. In fact, she might be thinking, "Now that we're better able to understand where/when/how leading questions can affect us, we'll be better able to prevent them!" Once we get down to (B) vs. (D), if we asked ourselves, "Which answer choice wraps its arms around more of the passage?", we would score more paragraphs touched on by (B) than by (D).
11% picked this
Stricter regulation should be placed
Out of Scope: stricter regulation
This passage never discussed stricter regulations being placed on lawyers, so it can't be our main point. This answer is doing something similar to how some trap answers on Main Conclusion work in LR: based on everything the author said, What Else is she likely to say / think? But we're supposed to be sticking to what she did say.
1% picked this

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