Q12 - When adults toss balls

[phlee004]

I have a quick question.

I understand why (A) is correct, but the last part about "self-defense" totally threw me off. I still picked (A) but I was wondering if the part about "self-defense" weakens the answer choice in any way? For example, if there was an answer of similar strength, maybe something like "young kids are able to see faster pitches more clearly and thus react to them faster (proportionally) than they would to slower pitches" I know the LSAC would never put an answer like that on the test, but I could not come up with a better example.

I guess the crux of this post is if unnecessary information would ever deem an otherwise "correct" answer "incorrect."


Thanks!

-Phil

[ohthatpatrick]

Good question.

I think the idea of 'self-defense' strikes us as surprising because we weren't really predicting something like that when we read the paragraph.

We were probably predicting an answer that's more "on the nose", such as the one you suggested:
"children have an easier time seeing/tracking a ball thrown fast than they do seeing/tracking a ball thrown slowly"

You'll find, though, that a lot of Explain/Resolve the Unexpected questions have answers that come with a little bit of surprise. Sometimes you'll have a correct prediction of how they'll resolve the surprising finding, but more often than not they want you to have to work a little harder to get the correct answer, so they don't give a correct answer that gels with how most people would naturally resolve the discrepancy. Also, they don't hit the nail on the head with what we're trying to explain ... the correct answer is one tiny, common sense link away from what we're trying to explain.

f.e.,
"having an easier time catching a ball" ~=~ "trigger regions in the brain that control the tracking of objects for self-defense"

The most important distinction to draw for the question you asked, "Does it ever matter if there is extraneous information?" is the type of question you're doing.

In particular, Strengthen, Weaken, and Explain/Resolve will give you the most surprising correct answers. Somewhat new ideas are fair game as long as they have a common sense link to the core ideas in the stimulus.

Remember, all these question stems have the form of
"Which of the following [answer choices], if true [performs a certain function]?"

Whenever we see that "IF the answer choice is true", we don't have to worry about extraneous information. We also don't have to worry about extreme wording. They are handing us these ideas on a silver platter and merely asking, "Does THIS idea perform the function we want?"

The other 2 types of questions that somewhat relate are
Principle-Justify "which of the following principles, if valid, ..."
and
Suff-Assump "which of the following, if assumed, would allow ..."

"if valid" = "if assumed" = "if true"

These last two types are also allowed to go overboard in terms of being stronger or broader than what we were strictly talking about. As long as they relate to what we were talking about and justify the conclusion, they are correct.

The questions for which you should specifically be on your guard AGAINST new, previously-undiscussed ideas would be:
Necessary Assumption
Inference
Main Conclusion
Describe the Function
Describe the Argument

Hope this helps. Have fun.

[griffin.811]

This should have been an easy one, but I made this one too difficult.

The answer actually doesn't seem to be all that big of a reach, especially for those that have taken a psych class or two.

For this question, we need to focus on why exactly adults think they are benefiting the children by throwing the ball slowly. In this case, they are attempting to compensate for the child's developing coordination.

Next we need to make sense of the fact that children, despite their dev. coordination, are able to catch the balls that are thrown faster.

A gives us a good reason. Instead of relying on (the part of the brain that controls) coordination, they are relying on (the part of the brain responsible for) self defense.

[erikwoodward10]

Answer choice A also requires the necessary assumption that very young children have brains that have already developed self defense mechanisms.

My question is about the logical relationship between the answer choices and the stimulus. Are we allowed to make additional assumptions beyond what is written in the answer choice to make them correct? Alternatively, is this just a "common sense" assumption that the LSAT lets us take for granted?

[CharlesS800]

The two most important parts of this question's stimulus that I identified were the portions addressing children's developing coordination and the fact that children have an easier time catching balls thrown faster. With these two portions of the stimulus in the forefront of my mind, I evaluated the answers.

Both A and B seemed relatively appealing so I kept them.

I tossed C, D, and E because none of them were relevant to the task to explaining WHY the children found it easier to catch balls thrown quicker.

I was a little stuck between B and A. Reading over some of the explanations and re-reading the answer choices, I think that it is correct to get rid of B because it is the opposite of what we're looking for - it insinuates that tossing the balls more slowly makes it easier for children to catch the ball because it is not obscured. So, tossed B, left with answer choice A.