A recent study of perfect

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct93% picked this

   People who have relatives with perfect pitch generally receive no more musical training

   Why this is right

   This is ruling out an Alternate Explanation for the correlation, and indirectly increasing the plausibility that perfect pitch is an innate genetic trait, not a learned skill. It's possible that the reason "having perfect pitch" is correlated with "relatives who have perfect pitch" isn't because perfect pitch is a hereditary trait; rather, these families are the families that take music lessons. If your parents hire a piano teacher for you and your siblings, then you and your sibling might end up with perfect pitch, and so "having perfect pitch" will be correlated with "relatives who have perfect pitch", but the real causal factor is your piano teacher, not your genetics. This answer rules out that possibility. The people with perfect pitch aren't more musically trained. So musical training isn't what's causing the perfect pitch. That increases the plausibility that perfect pitch is innate, not learned.

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

   93%
2. B

   No Impact0% picked this

   All of the researchers conducting the study had

   It doesn't matter whether 0% or 18% or 100% of the researchers had perfect pitch. Them having perfect pitch has nothing to do with the study's data, which is what the author is trying to causally interpret.

   0%
3. C

   No Impact: music as career0% picked this

   People with perfect pitch are more likely than others to choose music

   The fact that someone with perfect pitch is more likely to do X doesn't tell us anything about how they got that perfect pitch. Did it come from genetic factors or learned experience? This answer is talking about what effects come from having perfect pitch. This argument is concerned with sussing out the cause of perfect pitch.

   0%
4. D

   Weakens6% picked this

   People with perfect pitch are more likely than others to make sure that their children

   This is the Alternate Explanation we ruled out in choice (A). This would allow someone to say, "Author -- the reason that perfect pitch seems to 'run in the family' isn't because it's a genetic trait, it's just because certain families are all music nerds that learn music and then make their kids learn music."

   6%
5. E

   Weakens0% picked this

   People who have some training in music are more likely to have perfect pitch than those

   This is the opposite of (A). The fact that training in music is correlated with perfect pitch suggests that perfect pitch is learned, not innate.

   0%