Despite a steady decrease in

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact4% picked this

   There has been a dramatic increase over the past 20 years in the percentage of people who tell polltakers that television is their primary

   This answer choice talks about people's acknowledgment of TV as their primary information source. While it highlights a potential shift in preferences, it doesn't directly address the causal claim that increased TV viewing led to less newspaper reading.

   4%
2. B

   Correct74% picked this

   Of those members of the population who do not watch television, the percentage who read a newspaper every day has

   Why this is right

   This answer choice shows that even among those who do not watch TV, newspaper reading has decreased dramatically. This undermines the plausibility of the author's causal explanation, by providing Effect w/o Cause counterexamples. These data points have the Effect (reduced newspaper reading) even though they don't have the cause (they don't watch tv).

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

   74%
3. C

   No Impact17% picked this

   The time people spend with the books and newspapers they read has increased, on average, from 1 to 3 hours per week

   This choice states that time spent on reading books and newspapers increased. This doesn't address whether TV viewing caused a decline in newspaper reading, only that the nature of reading time has changed.

   17%
4. D

   No Impact4% picked this

   People who spend large amounts of time each day watching television are less able to process and remember printed information than are

   This answer suggests that watching a lot of TV may impair one's ability to process printed information. That would potentially reinforce the idea that TV might lead to less newspaper reading, but not in a way that contradicts the main argument.

   4%
5. E

   No Impact1% picked this

   A typical television set is on 6 hours a day, down from an average of 6 1/2 hours

   This talks about television sets being on for a slightly shorter period now than five years ago. It does not provide any information about the causal relation between TV viewing and newspaper reading.

   1%