Q11 - A university professor researching

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, (B) is on the right track but way too strong. Perhaps someone who is kooky from 2 days of sleep deprivation isn't a great judge of anything; perhaps some sleep scientist would be more accurate in assessing the overall effects on that sleep deprived person.

(A) is saying that the subjective (i.e. "internally perceived") effects of sleep deprivation are stronger than the overt (i.e. "outwardly perceived") effects.

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Inference (Most Strongly Support)

Break down the Stimulus:
Read for Conditional, Causal, Comparative, or Quantitative language.
This one seems to have some Causal and Comparative in it. On one hand, losing sleep makes this professor feel like a worse teacher (causal). Meanwhile, (contrast) the students can't tell which sessions the professor was "off".

Any prephrase?
I'd anticipate some weakly worded, safe way of straddling that contrast, something like "self-perceived differences in mood or performance are not always perceived by others"

Answer choice analysis:
A) New Comparison. Subjective is MORE PRONOUNCED than overt? However, this does speak to the contrast between the teacher FEELING off and the students not noticing overt differences. Maybe.

B) "No one" is way too extreme.

C) New comparison. Professors vs. other jobs?

D) New comparison. "Occasional" vs. "extended"?

E) Extreme. Students "tend to" be astute? This goes against the gist. It seems like the students did NOT astutely observe that the professor was feeling off.

The correct answer is A.
Takeaway/Pattern: Our best defense on Inference questions (LR and RC) is a suspicious feeling any time we see STRONG wording or COMPARATIVE wording. We have to be able to justify the strong or comparative wording based on what we were told. The friction point in this fact set is the "interestingly" ... it sets up the contrast between the professor's self-perceptions and the students perceptions of her.

#officialexplanation

[ganbayou]

first of all...I did not understand what A, the correct answer, says. could anyone explain it in simpler words?
I chose B because it seems true, the one who experiences the issue could tell the different, but not other ppl(students). why is B wrong? is it because of the strong word, *no one*? they only shows students so...

[JustinZ880]

I am guilty of this myself and so I speak from experience. Its hard under time crunch but don't eliminate an answer choice because of lack of understanding. Especially if you are between only two contenders. Try really hard to understand what's going on because it could be the right answer.

That said, what (A) is saying is: (Subjective effects) Those that are based upon feeling and not necessarily fact are likely to be more prominent than the (Overt behavior) The behavior that is actually observed (in this case by the students)

In other words: All these things that the professor felt were happening (the subjective things) they were really obvious and apparent to her but when it came to the class recognizing these things (her overt actions), they failed to recognize them because the feelings didn't match up with the action.

(A) is derived from the information in the stimulus which indicates this is the case.