Logical Reasoning

PT147 · S1 · Q8 While studying a large colony

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While studying a large colony of macaque monkeys, scientists interacting with baby monkeys under a week old found that the babies would imitate some, but not all, of the scientists' actions.

Statements

Contrast Baby macaques under a week old imitated some of the scientists' actions but not others.

They imitated lip smacking and sticking out the tongue. They did not imitate opening and closing the mouth or hand gestures.

Conditional (only) Used by adult macaques with babies → lip smacking or sticking out the tongue

Evaluate

Most Supported questions are primarily focused on causality. There is no explicit causality here but there are Two Differences.

One of the "causal difference maker" patterns on Most Supported is this whole One Difference Explains Another thing.

Difference 1: the only researcher actions the baby monkeys imitated where lip smacking and tongue sticking.

Difference 2: the only researcher actions that adult macaques use are lip smacking and tongue sticking.

The overlap is the place to look. Two lists appear in the passage: the actions the babies copied, and the actions adult macaques use with babies. The lists are identical.

This is setting us up to speculate that One Difference Explains the Other. The fact that adult macaques do lip smacking and tongue-stickin' around babies is probably why the babies only imitated those two actions.

Goal

Find the most provable claim, probably one suggesting a connection between which actions are done by adult macaques, and which ones the babies imitated.

8.

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

  1. Baby macaques under a week

    Contradicted

    The babies "stared impassively" at mouth opening and hand gestures. They imitated two of the four actions and ignored the other two, so they are not mimics of whatever they see.

    1% picked this

  2. Baby macaques under a week

    Unsupported Causality

    Nothing in the passage mentions muscle control. Muscles are one possible explanation for why hand gestures were not copied, but that wouldn't explain why the babies didn't copy opening/closing their mouths. The correct answer also speculates a causal explanation, but it suggests a stronger explanation for why the babies didn't imitate the hand gestures; it's a stronger explanation because it would by itself explain why the babies didn't do the hand gestures and why they didn't do the open/closed mouth thing. And it's better supported because we have information about adult macaques but don't have information about baby's muscular limitations.

    2% picked this

  3. Adult macaques use lip smacking

    Unsupported

    We know that adult macaques do these two behaviors when interacting with babies, but we don't know the purpose. Maybe it's for entertainment, but maybe it's some communication, bonding, or feeding cue.

    5% picked this

  4. Baby macaques under a week

    Too Speculative

    The passage reports what the babies did, not what they believed. Whether a week-old monkey can mistake a human for a macaque, or forms any such belief at all, is far beyond what the facts support. We don't need to think the babies mistook humans for adult macaques to say, "they only imitated the stuff they've seen their parents do".

    6% picked this

  5. Correct

    Baby macaques under a week

    Why this is right

    This is a strong idea, but from the available information, the babies only imitated human gestures also used by adult macaques. This answer stops short of saying anything causal. It's just sort of taking what we know (in this study, of the four actions tested, babies only imitated the human gestures also used by adult macaques) and making it into a bold universal rule. This certainly wouldn't qualify as a must be true inference: the word "only" is strong. But the answer does describe the pattern the passage lays out, and no other answer stays as close to the facts.

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

    85% picked this

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