At a large elementary school researchers

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact2% picked this

   Some students who did not participate in the chess program had learned to play

   Students who didn't participate in the program are almost completely irrelevant to this argument. The only way to make them relevant would be in some Effect w/o Cause way, where we impugn the idea that "chess caused these chess students to improve at school" by saying, "even the kids who weren't in the chess program improved at school to a similar degree".

   2%
2. B

   No Impact21% picked this

   Those children who began the program but who did not successfully complete it had lower preprogram levels of achievement than did those who

   The kids who didn't complete the program are irrelevant. We wouldn't even be able to use them in the Effect w/o Cause style alluded to for choice (A). After all, if a child began but didn't complete the chess program, then should we count them as a child who did receive the putative boost in reasoning power and spatial intuition, count them as someone who didn't? 50% boost? It would be completely unclear how to judge them, because "began but did not complete" doesn't tell us whether the student made it through only 1% of the program or through 90% of it before bailing. Also, comparing preprogram levels of achievement between students is irrelevant. This argument is only interested in what caused their achievement to rise. We don't care whether their starting point was low / medium / high. We would only care about what percentage of achievement increase the chess players had vs. the non-chess players. Regardless of preprogram levels, if chess players raised their GPA by 40% while non-chess players raised their GPA by 15%, that still presents the same curious fact of why the chess players are improving more than the non-chess players are improving.

   21%
3. C

   Correct55% picked this

   Many of the children who completed the program subsequently sought membership on a school chess team that required a

   Why this is right

   As we implicitly expect on Weaken questions for an Explain Curious Fact argument, this correct answer provides an Alternate Explanation for the curious fact. This allows us to argue, "hey, author --- the reason their schoolwork improved after going through the chess program isn't because chess improved their brain's ability to do schoolwork. It's because they got into chess, heard about this rad school chess team, thought to themselves 'I gotta be on that team!', found out that this team has a high minimum GPA, and started busting their butts academically to brings their grades up in order to be eligible to be part of this team." Pretty insane, right? Yes, that's exactly how LSAT thinks this question weakens. As a defense attorney, you create doubt about the causal storyline the prosecution is selling by planting other causal storylines in the jury's head. Those create the seeds of doubt, which weakens the prosecution's case. It's ever-so-crucial when we're doing Explain Curious Fact arguments that a) we recognized them as such b) that caused our brain to focus primarily on Alternate Storylines that could explain the curious fact Because it's hard to hear what this answer is offering if you're not desperate for an alternative causal story.

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

   55%
4. D

   No Impact15% picked this

   Some students who did not participate in the chess program participated instead in after-school study sessions that helped them reach much higher levels of

   Students who didn't participate in the program are almost completely irrelevant to this argument. The only way to make them relevant would be in some Effect w/o Cause way, where we impugn the idea that "chess caused these chess students to improve at school" by saying, "even the kids who weren't in the chess program improved at school to a similar degree". This is not saying that. It's saying, "there's at least one student who wasn't in the chess program, who got some after-school help and improved at school in the year that followed". This author was never claiming that "chess is the only thing that helps students" or that "chess is the best thing that helps students", so the fact that other students would be achieving improvement without using the chess program doesn't trouble this author at all. This sort of data point doesn't count as Effect w/o Cause, because it's really more like Effect Due to Different Cause (that's not a thing, I just put it in italics so it matched the formatting). If students were "naturally" increasing their achievement levels significantly, without being in the chess program (or without having any other assist mechanism like after-school tutoring) then that would suggest that the achievement boost in the students who played chess was probably just this "natural" improvement, not chess-assisted improvement.

   15%
5. E

   No Impact7% picked this

   At least some of the students who did not successfully complete the program were nevertheless more talented chess players than some of the

   Students who didn't participate in the program are almost completely irrelevant to this argument. The only way to make them relevant would be in some Effect w/o Cause way, where we impugn the idea that "chess caused these chess students to improve at school" by saying, "even the kids who weren't in the chess program improved at school to a similar degree". This answer is talking about the chess talent of the non-participants, which is not relevant unless we also connect their chess talent to a boost / non-boost in scholastic achievement. But we have no idea whether non-participants had any increase in their schoolwork achievement levels.

   7%