Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Hard

PT150 S4 P2 Q14 Explanation

Inferential Thoughts

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsInferenceSociety

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Passage

Common sense suggests that we know our own thoughts directly, but that we infer the thoughts of other people. The former process is noninferential and infallible, while the latter is based on others’ behavior and can always be wrong. But this assumption is challenged by experiments in psychology demonstrating that in certain are wrong to think of ourselves as having noninferential and infallible access to our own thoughts.

Recognizing an obligation to explain why we cling so tenaciously to an illusory belief in noninferential and infallible knowledge of our own thoughts, these psychologists suggest that this illusion is analogous to what happens to us when we become experts in a particular area. Greater expertise appears to change not only our in our identification of what we ourselves think because we believe we are perceiving it directly.

In claiming that we have only inferential access to our thoughts, the psychologists come perilously close to claiming that we base our inferences about what we ourselves are thinking solely on observations of our own external behavior. But, in fact, their arguments do not commit them to this claim; the psychologists suggest that contradicts our own. Thus, they are crucial in creating the illusion of noninferentiality and infallibility.

What this question is testing

Inference

Your task

Find what must be true based on what the passage or stimulus states.

Common trap

Answers that are plausible or likely but not actually guaranteed by the text.

Winning move

Keep only the choice the statements fully support — eliminate anything that requires an extra assumption.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
14.

It can most reasonably be inferred that the choice of children as the subjects of the psychology experiments discussed in the passage was advantageous to the experimenters for

Answer choices

  1. Out of Scope: more creative1% picked this

    Experiments involving children are more likely to give interesting results because children are more

    The distinction we're being tested on is that children are more likely to be incapable of describing their own thoughts.

  2. Opposite11% picked this

    Adults are more likely than children to give inaccurate reports of

    This is the correct idea, but assigned to the wrong parties. The children are more likely to give inaccurate reports of their thought processes.

  3. Bad 1st Half16% picked this

    Since adults are infallible in their access to their own thoughts, only the thought processes of children shed light

    The whole point of this passage is that experimenters are suggesting it's possible that we're all fallible when it comes to our own thoughts, so we can't sign off on saying "adults are infallible in their access to their own thoughts". From the experimenters' point of view, we're all fallible, but children will be an easier way to demonstrate that.

  4. Correct36% picked this

    Mental processes are sometimes easier to study in children because children are more likely than adults to

    Why this is right

    The distinction we're being tested on is that "children are much less capable (than adults) of identifying the thoughts they have regarding simple phenomena". In certain circumstances, young children "tend to misdescribe their own thoughts". That qualifies as a cognitive error.

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

  5. Opposite: observing own behavior36% picked this

    Children are less experienced than adults in inferring the thoughts of others from observations

    In the final paragraph, the author makes clear that these psychologists are not saying the crazy claim that we infer our own thoughts by observing our own behavior (they came perilously close to saying that bunk, but no). The explanation favored by these psychologists is that we infer our thoughts from internal phenomena. So this answer could have probably worked if it said that "kids are less experienced at inferring their own thoughts from their own internal cognitive activity".

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