Logical Reasoning

PT132 · S4 · Q3 A recent study of perfect

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A recent study of perfect pitch-the ability to identify the pitch of an isolated musical note-found that a high percentage of people who have perfect pitch are related to someone else who has it.

Conclusion (this shows that)

Having perfect pitch is a consequence of genetic factors.

Evidence

In a study, the people with perfect pitch were much more likely to have relatives who had perfect pitch than were people who didn't have perfect pitch.

Evaluate

Usually, when there's a study, the data yields some sort of correlation or Asymmetric Comparison we call a Curious Fact.

Curious Fact ... how come people who have perfect pitch (PP) have relatives with PP, whereas people who don't have PP don't have relatives with PP?

Author's Explanation ... PP must be something genetic. It seems to "run in the family", so it must be innate, not learned.

The two pressure points for Explain Curious Fact style arguments are always: 1. Alternate Explanations for the curious fact 2. the plausibility of the Author's Explanation

What could be a different reason why perfect pitch seems to be associated within a family?

Maybe if you're a parent that possesses the skill of perfect pitch, you naturally teach it to your kids, who then teach it to their kids.

We could probably say that .

We certainly wouldn't conclude that being good with cars is an innate trait. It's more likely that if your grandparents or parents knew how to fix a car, you got to watch them do it and you learned, and then you taught your kids.

What could increase the plausibility that perfect pitch is genetic, not learned? The most common way to Strengthen a cause-effect conclusion is to present an answer with a "No Cause, No Effect" form. If we found out that the adopted children of parents who had perfect pitch did not have perfect pitch, that would be strong evidence that perfect pitch is genetic.

The adopted children don't have the same genes (No Cause), so they don't have perfect pitch (No Effect).

Goal

Let's look for something that rules out an Alternate Explanation for the study's correlation or something that increases the plausibility that perfect pitch is innate, not learned.

3.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

  1. Correct

    People who have relatives with

    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% picked this

  2. All of the researchers conducting

    No Impact

    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% picked this

  3. People with perfect pitch are

    No Impact: music as career

    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% picked this

  4. People with perfect pitch are

    Weakens

    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% picked this

  5. People who have some training

    Weakens

    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.

    1% picked this

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