Psychology researchers observed

Answer choices

1. A

   Weak Strengthener5% picked this

   A separate study by the same researchers found that parents feel more emotion when singing to their own children than

   We already knew that parents feel emotion when singing to their infants. This answer lets us know that they feel more emotion if its their children vs. other children. (Obvi, other people's children are gross) The fact that parents feel more emotion around their kids than around other kids makes it seem like the level of emotion around their kids is potentially the highest level of emotion. That weakly strengthens the author's storyline, although we still don't have any sense of whether feeling emotion actually changes the sound of the singing.

   5%
2. B

   No Impact1% picked this

   Some, but not all, of the parents in the study realized that their song renditions

   It doesn't really matter whether the parents knew they were being recorded or not. We wouldn't want to let them in on the aim of the study, so we would hope they don't realize that what's being listened for is "infant-present" vs. "infant-absent" emotion. Either way, this answer makes us feel somewhat better about the "blind" aspect of some of the participants who didn't even realize they were being recorded (because a more 'honest' performance probably came out), but that's a very weak strengthener.

   1%
3. C

   Weak Strengthener9% picked this

   Parents displayed little emotion when singing with no child or

   It feels like (A) and (C) would accomplish similar levels of Strengthening and thus kind of cancel each other out as viable answers. Since the author is trying to sell us on the idea that the emotion parents feel while singing to their kids has a noticeable effect on their voice, he is definitely assuming that "there's a difference, both emotional and sonic, when it comes to parents singing to their kids vs. not". So (C) provides a dissimilarity the author is assuming (they feel more emotion when it's their kid vs. nothing), and (A) provides a dissimilarity the author is assuming (they feel more emotion when it's their kid vs. some random kid). But we're not especially worried about the notion of whether parents do / don't feel a ton of emotion when they're around their infant. We're especially worried about whether that emotion changes the sound of their singing voice, and whether that's how 80% of the time the psychologists could guess right.

   9%
4. D

   Correct84% picked this

   When a person feels emotion, that emotion provokes involuntary physiological responses that affect the vocal

   Why this is right

   This greatly increases the plausibility of the author's hypothesis, which is that the emotion parents feel while singing to their infants noticeably affects the sound of the singing. This answer describes the causal mechanism by which emotion would affect the sound of singing.

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

   84%
5. E

   Belief vs. Fact1% picked this

   Most of the parents who participated in the study believed that the emotion they felt while singing to

   We might say this weakly strengthens, since people might be decent judges of whether emotion is affecting their singing. But to LSAC, it's opinion in (E) vs. involuntary physiological response in (D). Science > Opinion (at least it still works that way in LSAT's wonderfully old-fashioned universe). The opinion we'd be even more interested in hearing would be the psychologists, who were the ones that were actually judging the sound. If most of them told us "we noticed that the singing sounded different when infants were there", then that would strengthen the author's story and push back against alternate versions of how they were able to guess right 80% of the time.

   1%