Logical Reasoning

PT131 · S2 · Q13 Bethany: Psychologists have discovered

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Bethany: Psychologists have discovered a technique for replacing one's nightmares with pleasant dreams, and have successfully taught it to adults suffering from chronic nightmares.

Conclusion

Psychologists should direct efforts to finding kids who have lots of nightmares, so that they can teach them this technique and hopefully prevent them from growing up as adults who have lots of nightmares.

Evidence

They've successfully taught this technique to nightmare-prone adults, and kids who are nightmare-prone are more likely to grow up to be such adults.

Evaluation

What "if Premise, then Conclusion" bridge idea would get us from Evidence to the Conclusion? Maybe something like ...

If there's a technique that works on adults, then psychologists should direct efforts at finding the kids who are most likely to need this as adults.

Goal

Somehow strengthen the idea that because kids with nightmares grow up to be adults with nightmares, we should direct our efforts towards those kids.

13.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify drawing the conclusion in Bethany's argument?

  1. Psychologists should make an effort

    Bad Conclusion Match

    The author wants the psychologists to find nightmare prone children so that the children can learn this technique, not so that the psychologists can investigate root causes of nightmares.

    3% picked this

  2. Any psychological technique that can

    Reversal

    It would help us to know that "if it's teachable to an adult, then it's teachable to a child", but this answer reverses that logic.

    15% picked this

  3. Correct

    Psychologists should do everything they

    Why this is right

    On a first pass I wouldn't find this super appealing. It doesn't reinforce much wording from the argument core, the way that correct answers on Principle-Justify almost always do. But it certainly strengthens. If psychologists should do everything they can to reduce adult nightmares, they would not only teach it to adults (as they're currently doing), they would also direct some efforts towards finding kids with lots of nightmares, who are more likely to become a source of adult nightmares.

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

    70% picked this

  4. Identifying nightmare-prone children is generally

    Weakens / Opposite

    This would be a reason not to direct efforts towards finding nightmare prone children

    4% picked this

  5. Psychologists should not teach the

    Bad Conclusion Match

    The conclusion doesn't say that psychologists should only teach this technique to nightmare-prone children. It just affirms that they should spend some energy trying to find such children and teach them the nightmare-avoidance technique. Saying that you shouldn't teach this technique to people less likely to have nightmares is not any sort of justification for the idea that you should teach this technique to people more likely to have nightmares.

    8% picked this

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