Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S1 · Q23 Editorial: Teenagers tend to wake up

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Editorial: Teenagers tend to wake up around 8:00 A.M., the time when they stop releasing melatonin, and are sleepy if made to wake up earlier.

Conclusion

If the school day started later than 8am, car accidents involving teenagers driving to school could be reduced.

Evidence (since, indeed)

Sleepiness can impair driving ability.

Teens tend to wake up around 8am.

If teens are made to wake up earlier, they are sleepy.

When Granville’s high school pushed back its starting time to 830am, the overall number of car accidents involving teen drivers declined in Granville.

Evaluate

Well, this is a mouthful to take in. On one hand we have a Comparison situation because the author is proposing a certain Plan (later start time for school day) and predicting a certain Result/Goal (reduce accidents involving teens driving to school).

We have to consider differences between “Plan World” and “Actual World”.

The author is highlighting one thing that will change, [teens are hopefully less sleepy while driving to school], but we need to consider what other things might change? Maybe the normal rush hour in Granville is from 8am - 9am, so if we are suddenly adding teen drivers to that mix, we’re making that hour of driving more dangerous in a way that might actually add more accidents involving teen drivers. LSAT loves to test the idea of a Plan backfiring and making something worse in an unanticipated way. This Plan also assumes that it’s feasible for teens to sleep in to 8am, regardless of school start time. Maybe their parents are waking them up by 7am

Remember, teens don’t have to cause the accident. As long as their in an accident with some road-rage morning commuter, it still counts as “an accident involving teenagers”.

There’s also a conditional logic element to this answer. If teens are made to wake up earlier than 8, they are sleepy. Our author seems to be assuming a difference, that

Finally, there’s the Interpreting a Curious Fact part of this argument. The author is assuming that the number of car accidents decreased when Granville’s high school pushed its start time back is because there was less sleepy driving to school by teens. But maybe there’s some alternate explanation for why number of car accidents went down (i.e. a pandemic where everyone has to stay home).

Goal

Yikes, so how many pressure points does this argument have?

- we want to know that if schools pushed back their start times, it would be feasible for teens to wake up later, that they would do so, that they would be less sleepy as a result of doing so, and that changing their drive-to-school times later would not create any new issues that might facilitate more accidents involving teens.

- additionally, we’re in the market for any answers ruling out alternate explanations for why teen accidents declined in Granville or making it more plausible that the change of start time for the high school was the reason.

23.

Which one of the following, if true, provides the most support for the argument in the editorial?

Teenagers start releasing melatonin later
No Impact
This argument is only about teens, their melatonin, their sleepiness, their accidents. Learning anything about young children’s melatonin level is irrelevant to us.
10% picked this
Sleepy teenagers are tardy for
No Impact
If the conclusion were purely a recommendation that “we should push back start time”, then this could pile on an additional reason why it might be worth doing (fewer tardy students). But the conclusion is only about whether accidents involving teens would rise or fall, and this answer has nothing to do with that.
18% picked this
Teenagers who work at jobs
No Impact
This plan is changing the start time for high school, so it affects teens who attend high school during the day. Teens that don’t go to high school during the day won’t be directly affected by this plan, so making any sort of comparison to them is just as irrelevant as it was to bring up young children in (A).
3% picked this
Many of the car accidents
Weakens, if anything
Really, this answer is a non-issue. No one is assuming that all accidents involving teens occur in the morning, so learning that “many” occur in the evening really changes nothing that our common sense hadn’t already assumed. But to the extent that this plan is meant to reduce accidents by focusing on morning driving, the more we think that teen accidents occur in the evening, the more we’re weakening the potential of this Plan to impact the root of the problem.
11% picked this
Correct
Car accidents involving teenage drivers
Why this is right
It’s important to remember how bad the other four answers are, because this doesn’t have to do much to still be the answer that strengthens most. This increases the plausibility that the reduction of accidents in Granville was due to something local to Granville. If accidents are going up in surrounding regions, it implicitly rules out the possibility of broader alternative explanations like a pandemic / a weather catastrophe that led to less driving. If this answer is telling us that the thing that caused the decline in Granville was local to Granville, does that prove that it was the changed high school start time? Of course not, but it does add some plausibility to that while diminishing the plausibility of some more regional alternative explanations.
Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
59% picked this

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