Q1 - Students in a first-year undergraduate course

[ShehryarB30]

Could you pls explain this question

[ohthatpatrick]

QUESTION TYPE: Inference (most supported)

READ FOR: claims that could be combined, usually using Conditional / Causal / Quantitative / Comparative language

STIMULUS:
There appears to be a comparison between two groups.
Same news articles, different headlines.
When they were asked later about the articles, the groups agreed amongst themselves, but had differing views from those in the other group.

ANSWER ANTICIPATION:
This stimulus looks like a classic case of a "Solve the causal mystery", which is a big pattern in Inference-Most Supported.

Why did the two groups have different answers, if they read the same articles?
The only difference we learned about was the different headlines, so the most supported "Causal difference-maker" is that the different headlines caused different answers.

So we would want some safely worded answer that says "the headline of the article has some effect on your impressions of the article / on how you'd talk about the article later".

ANSWERS:
(A) too strong. We believe headlines have an effect, but can we say "readers base their impressions on headlines ALONE"?

(B) "hamper" is too loaded a verb. We think that headlines at least colored the reader's comprehension, but "hamper" means they struggled to comprehend.

(C) unknown comparison. We don't know anything about senior students and wouldn't have any support for this comparison.

(D) too strong. "HIGHLY misleading"? We're just saying the headline had some effect.

(E) YES, this just says the headline had some effect.


TAKEAWAYS:
Inference questions reward us for combining ideas. Ultimately, we want to pick the most provable / most supported answer, so we're constantly on the lookout for answers that are
- too strong / specific
- make an unknown comparison
- bring up something out of scope
- reverse the logic / go the opposite direction (especially when conditional logic is involved)