Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S4 · Q14 In older commercial airplanes

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In older commercial airplanes, the design of the control panel allows any changes in flight controls made by one member of the flight crew to be immediately viewed by the other crew members.

Statements

Comparative Distinction

In older planes, more so than newer planes, other crew members could more easily see when another member of the flight crew made some change in the flight controls.

Causal Connection (thereby)

Making it harder to observe other members' flight control changes eliminated a routine means for performing cross-checks.

Causal Connection (as a result)

Because they can no longer see the changes to flight controls made by other members of the team, members of flight crews verbally inform each other about what they're changing.

Evaluate

It's hard to say what the correct answer will go for here, but typically the correct answer reinforces Causal Connections, or spells out their implicit logic.

If making it harder to see others' changes eliminated a routine means for performing cross-checks, then we can infer that in older planes, members of the flight crew would routinely visually look at the flight controls to cross-check what other crew members were changing.

If depriving flight crews of a visual cross-check led to more verbal announcements of flight control changes, then we can infer that in older planes, members of the flight crew didn't feel as much need to announce the changes they were making.

Goal

Look for the most provable answer, being wary of Strong/Specific language, Out of Scope ideas, or Unknown Comparisons.

14.

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

  1. How frequently an airplane’s flight

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: depends in large part Out of Scope: how long to change Nothing in the paragraph talks about how long it takes to make a flight control change (it doesn't even make a lot of sense — aren't we just talking about turning a knob or flipping a switch?)

    1% picked this

  2. In recently manufactured aircraft, the

    Too Strong: most valuable

    This is certainly going in the right gist-y direction, but it's got the poisonously strong word of "most". We don't have any way to rank verbal cross-checks as #1 cross-checking means. The means it replaced was only labeled a routine means for performing cross-checks. The paragraph only told us that cross-checks are valuable. It didn't use any comparative language to rank them.

    14% picked this

  3. In older commercial airplanes, in

    Too Strong: no need

    We know that in newer planes the flight crew informs each other verbally much more frequently, but that doesn't mean that in older planes the flight crew never informed each other verbally.

    7% picked this

  4. The flight crew members operating

    Too Strong: cannot observe

    The passage tells us that the newer control panel makes flight control changes harder to observe, not impossible to observe.

    9% picked this

  5. Correct

    How often flight crew members

    Why this is right

    This has safer language: depends in part. This just reinforces the Causal Connection conveyed by the "as a result". Because one means of cross-checks was made less available (newer planes make it harder to observe changes on the control panel), flight crew members started to need to share information verbally much more frequently. So we can derive that "the availability of alternative means of cross-checking can have an impact (depends in part on ) on how frequently members need to verbally share information".

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

    68% picked this

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