Q13 - Therapist: Cognitive psychotherapy focuses

[dan]

13. (B)
Question Type: Strengthen the Conclusion
One way to strengthen an argument is to provide a piece of information that closes a gap in the argument. In other words, we can strengthen this argument by explicitly stating one of the assumptions. Let’s rearrange this argument in order to make the logic more transparent. Cognitive psychotherapy changes conscious beliefs. Other forms of psychotherapy change unconscious beliefs. Since only conscious beliefs are under the direct control of the patient, cognitive psychotherapy is likely to be more effective at treating psychological problems.

What’s the assumption? The author assumes that in order to be effective, a treatment must address mental processes that are under the control of the patient. This is easy to miss, but it’s an important assumption that is critical to the argument. We can strengthen the argument by making this assumption explicit. Answer (B) does this.

(A) weakens the argument.
(C) is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if it’s the only form of therapy that focuses on conscious beliefs. The argument deals only with cognitive psychotherapy vs. other forms of psychotherapy that do NOT focus on conscious beliefs.
(D) strengthens the argument by providing an additional piece of supporting evidence, but it does not strengthen as much as answer (B). An answer that fills a gap in the argument will generally strengthen the most (since the argument is weak with the gap).
(E) fails to provide any information comparing the two types of therapy.


#officialexplanation

[mkeat_theraptor]

Why B and not C?

[stackoutawinner]

I'm with you on this.

Armed with the correct answer, my only thought is that the logical gap deals with connecting the other forms of psychotherapy and their results.

The argument goes something like this:
Only conscious beliefs are under conscious control
Cognitive psych focuses on conscious belief.
Therefore, Cognitive psych is more effective with psychological problems than other forms of psychotherpy that focus on unconscious beliefs

The unstated premise is that psychological problems are dealt with consciously or are in the conscious realm.

Let me add that to the argument chain

Only conscious beliefs are under conscious control
Cognitive psych focuses on conscious belief.
Psychological problems are effectively dealt with in the conscious realm *unstated*
Therefore, Cognitive psych is more effective with psychological problems than other forms of psychotherpy that focus on unconscious beliefs

I'll admit, I don't like answer choice B because it equates difficult with impossible, but the one thing that it does do (upon reflection and only armed with the knowledge that my original choice is incorrect) is attempt to bridge the gap in that third premise.

In fact, it seems to reverse it:
No effective without conscious and thus if conscious then effective

But, like I said, the problem in this answer choice is "difficult" - and I just translated difficult as "no"

Doing this, it makes perfect sense.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Thanks again Stacks, for all that you contribute to the discussion!

Here is my take on this problem:

The initial argument has a huge gap in its reasoning. Essentially, the author makes a point that cognitive therapy is more effective because it deals with the conscious, rather than the unconscious. We've been given no proof that this a characteristic that makes therapy more or less effective.

When there is such a huge gap in the original argument, chances are more than likely that the right answer will address it. Answer choice (B) helps bridge that gap. Is it something that makes the argument perfect? No. The right answer does not do need to do that. It does, however, help make the point that dealing with the conscious is more effective than dealing with the unconscious.

Answer choice (C) is not relevant to the subject matter in the conclusion. The conclusion in the argument compares cognitive psychotherapy with therapy that focuses on the unconscious. For this specific comparison, it doesn't matter if there are other forms of conscious therapy or not.

Hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[mkeat_theraptor]

Again, I think I would still get this question wrong in an actual test situation.

I think if you accept B as an inference, or something like it, for example my paraphrase was "Focusing on conscious beliefs more effectively overcomes psychological problems than focusing on unconscious beliefs", then C strengthens the argument much more because it suggests that cognitive psychotherapy is the only type of psychotherapy that focuses on conscious beliefs, and thus the only type with the potential to be more effective than all other psychotherapies which do not focus on the conscious.

The difficulty I am having is clarifying the difference between an assumption and an inference - for example, I thought B be could be inferred from the stimulus and so felt that the CR would need to go a step further.

[stackoutawinner]

The difference between inferring and assuming is that inferring is a logical conclusion. It must be true based on the argument or what's stated. When we're looking at assuming or an assumption, it's an UNSTATED premise. On the LSAT, anything that is stated is taken as true, and if it's unstated then it's open for debate.

In this particular argument, the unstated premise is that pscyhological issues are dealt with effectively on the conscious level and ineffectively on the unconscious level. (or something to that effect)

It's clearly unstated.

If we take that unstated premise and TREAT it as though it had been stated, then answer choice C would work - the problem is that it was unstated and therefore not supported in the argument.

I think the lesson that this question teaches us is that they can give us an incorrect answer choice that would strengthen the argument if we were to take an assumption at face value.

Just remember that INFERRING means we derive only from what's stated.
ASSUMPTION is articulating what's not stated.

I happen to agree with you about this question, it's very challenging and I think a big reason is because the correct answer uses difficult language and the best wrong answer strengthens the argument if we take the assumption at face value.

If you think about it, on a strengthen question, we can strengthen by expressing the assumption (ie, turning it to fact) or by adding another premise... because the answer choice B gives us such lousy languaging (and thus disguising it some), we are more likely to skip over it and choose the additional premise when the assumption into fact is the more vital part of the argument.

I'd also like to say that Mike's response was great. The guy just knows how to look at these things and nail them. He can get these for very simple reasons. Answer C doesn't directly impact the conclusion and therefore wrong... he's right about that.

[mkeat_theraptor]

I agree with you about the strange phrasing of this question. I think if it were an assumption question and not a strengthen question, I would feel more comfortable with B as answer choice. However, as an assumption question it would also be much easier (given the same 5 answer choices).

[stackoutawinner]

Just remember that with a strengthen or weaken, an unstated premise (assumption) is fair play, but doesn't have to be.

If there's no assumption in the argument, then the additional premise (in a strengthen) is the right choice and the counter premise (in a weaken) is the right choice.

In other words, if it's a strengthen Q then there could be an assumption
S --> could be assumption

If there's an assumption then it could be a strengthen
A --> could be strengthen

But it doesn't HAVE to be either.

[goriano]

I struggled with this question as well. I couldn’t decide between (B), (C), and (D).

Answer choice (C) is not relevant to the subject matter in the conclusion. The conclusion in the argument compares cognitive psychotherapy with therapy that focuses on the unconscious. For this specific comparison, it doesn't matter if there are other forms of conscious therapy or not.

I’m still unconvinced about this explanation. The stimulus compares cognitive psychotherapy vs. "other psychotherapy" that focuses on the unconscious. But nowhere does the stimulus say that focusing on unconscious and focusing on conscious are mutually exclusive. So couldn’t these "other" forms be focusing on conscious beliefs as well? (C) seems to close this gap by stating that cognitive psychotherapy is "the only" form that focuses PRIMARILY on it. I’m usually skeptical of the work primarily, but this time it seemed to be a good use of the word.

I’m also still very conflicted between (B) and (D). Both seemed to be saying the similar things.

(B) says: If psychotherapy effective --> focus on direct conscious control. Contrapositive: If don’t focus on direct conscious control --> psychotherapy not effective. My problem with (B) is that the contrapositive’s sufficient condition is NOT triggered because again, we can’t assume that these other forms of psychotherapy don’t ALSO focus on direct conscious control.

(D) says: If psychotherapy (that focuses on unconscious) effective --> help change direct conscious control. Contrapositive: If don’t help change conscious control --> psychotherapy (that focuses on unconscious) not effective.

So assuming that the forthcoming explanation resolves my issue with (C), I’d like help on deciding between (B) and (D).

First, how should we differentiate between "focusing on direct conscious control" in (B) vs. "helping change direct conscious control" in (D) especially as to the way it relates to the stimulus? To me, the contrapositive’s sufficient condition in (D) could be triggered with fewer assumptions. That is, unlike (B), where we need to assume that these other psychotherapy forms don’t also FOCUS on conscious control, we don’t have to assume that with (D) and still be reasonably able to infer that these "other" forms probably won’t HELP change conscious control. Is this a correct reading and do the testmakers really expect one to analyze these two answer choices in such excruciating detail?

On the other hand, (B)’s scope seems much more broad"”"ANY form of psychotherapy" vs. (D)’s scope, which is only about a subset of psychotherapy that focuses on unconscious beliefs and desires. So, (B) reads like a sufficient assumption while (D) reads like a necessary one. Now since (B) was the correct answer, I’m wondering whether on questions that ask what would MOST STRENGTHEN, I should just have picked (B) because it was a sufficient assumption and ignored the analysis I was trying to do in the previous paragraph. Or is there something else between (B) and (D) that I am missing?

Thank you in advanced and I can't thank you all enough for hosting this forum and giving an opportunity for self studyers like myself to do well on the exam!

[ohthatpatrick]

Well, there was no dearth of interesting questions/observations/theories in the last couple posts, so let me try to hit as many points as I can without going too far.

First of all, let's once and for all shoot down (C) as an irrelevant idea.

Let me give you this analogous argument:

TASL prep focuses on taking the LSAT in reverse numerical order. Thus, TASL prep is likely to be more effective at raising students' scores than are prep companies who focus on taking the LSAT in ascending numerical order, since only reverse numerical order forces a student to do the hardest questions first.

Think about what the assumption currently is.

Consider the analogous answer (C):

(C) TASL is the only prep company that focuses on taking the LSAT in reverse numerical order.

Does this help convince you that "TASL prep is likely to be more effective at raising your score than are other companies"?

No. By itself, who cares whether there are several companies like TASL who tell you to take the test backwards or whether TASL is unique in that regard?

The essential question we need to evaluate is whether there's any connection between taking the test backwards and raising your score.

More specifically, since we were told that taking the test backwards means 'doing the harder questions first', the essential gap we need to evaluate is whether 'doing the harder questions first' has any bearing on 'being more effective at raising students' scores'.

(I hope that some of you are currently thinking, "wait-a-sec, should I take the test backwards?")

So (C) cannot possibly strengthen this argument.

The previous poster was bringing up an interesting point about whether "focusing on conscious" vs. "focusing on unconscious" are mutually exclusive.

I would argue that they are. The verb 'focus' seems to imply a majority of attention, so most of your attention is either devoted to conscious or unconscious. (if you think about what 'focus' literally means for the eye, if you are currently focusing on the words in this sentence, it is mutually exclusive for you to be focusing on the sentence in the paragraph above)

So (C) can't strengthen the argument the way he/she was thinking (i.e. by ruling out the possibility that therapies that "focus on unconscious might still focus primarily on conscious"). Because of the mutual exclusivity, we already know that any therapy that "focuses on the unconscious" is NOT going to be "focusing on conscious" as well.

We don't have to pick (B) over (C) because (B) is related to a crucial assumption while (C) strengthens by adding an additional premise. (C) does not strengthen. (But Stacks was definitely correct in saying that there is a range of possibility for Str/Weak answers ... sometimes they directly target an assumption .. other times they add what feels more like additional corroborating/disconfirming evidence)

The previous poster mentioned the difference in strength/breadth between (B) and (D) and even likened them to Suff and Nec assumptions, respectively. Although those labels do not technically apply to (B) and (D), because (B) does not prove the conclusion is true, nor does (D) have to be true for the argument to make sense, the overall point of "stronger is better" is definitely valid for Str/Weak.

Any question stem that labels the answer choices "if true" / "if valid" / "if assumed" will favor stronger answers over weaker ones.

Finally, (B) vs. (D).
(B) indeed says
~Focus on states patient can control --> difficult to be effect.

As we discussed already, the "forms of psychotherapy that focus on changing unconscious ..." does match the sufficient condition here. If you focus on unconscious, then you do not focus on conscious (which means you do not focus on states a patient can control). So this answer is telling us that it is difficult for therapies that 'focus on unconscious' to be effective.

That certainly doesn't prove the conclusion, because we have no reason to believe that 'focusing on conscious' IS effective. But it does strengthen the argument.

If you're trying to convince me that "A is likely to be more effective than B", then it strengthens your argument to say "it is difficult for any type of B to be effective".

The previous poster was right to notice how similar (B) and (D) are, but the differences between them are crucial.

(D) says
Unconscious-focused therapy effective --> helps change beliefs under patient's direct control

We certainly can't do anything with this as written, because we can't establish the Suff condition.

The contrapositive says:
~help change beliefs under patient's direct control --> ~eff.

Can we establish the Suff condition here? Do we know from the argument that unconscious-focused therapy does not help change beliefs under the patient's direct control?

No. Like the previous poster mentioned, whether something "helps change beliefs under patient's control" does not mean the same thing as whether that thing "focuses on changing beliefs under patient's control".

We can establish that unconscious-focused therapy does not focus on changing beliefs under the patient's control, but we don't know whether it helps/doesn't help change beliefs under patient's control.

So the language of this conditional idea does not allow us to use anything we know from the premises to infer anything additional.

(whereas with (B), the language of that conditional idea DID allow us to infer that unconscious-focused therapy will have a difficult time being effective).

Since we dissected so many subtle points, let's remember how to make this question easy on ourselves.

Our conc said:
"Type A therapy is likely to be more effective than Type ~A therapy"

why?
- Type A therapy focuses on changing conscious beliefs
- Type ~A does not focus on changing conscious beliefs
- Only conscious beliefs are under the patient's direct control

NOTE: nothing in the evidence ever says anything close to whether something is "likely to be effective / likely to be more effective than something else". So I am practically SURE that the correct answer will deal with "effectiveness". Goodbye (A) and (C).

What is the dangling idea from the premises (an idea only mentioned once) that needs to be connected to the concept of "effectiveness"?
"being under the patient's direct conscious control"

(E) mentions both concepts, but does not actually try to connect "under direct control" to "effectiveness". Goodbye (E).

At this point, we would need to be careful/thoughtful with the wording of (B) and (D) to determine which one gives us the proper link/order/language we're looking for.

Hope this helps.

[alexg89]

Although the discussion has probably covered everything here is my explanation if someone is looking for a shorter bit to read and was mainly stuck between B and D.

LR,3 Q13 Strengthen
Need to link the fact that cognitive therapy focuses on changing conscious beliefs with the fact that it is more likely to help a patient that than other forms of psych treatment.

A: Weakens
B: Correctly strengthens the argument by showing that cognitive therapy would be more effective. Since to be likely to be effective at all it must have focused on changing beliefs under a patients control.
C: Premise booster, doesn’t strengthen conclusion.
D: Very tempting. It would mean that forms of psychotherapy that change unconscious beliefs would need to change conscious ones all well. This, however, leaves open the possibility that these types of psychotherapy could be more effective at changing conscious beliefs by first changing unconscious ones and would thus weaken the argument.
E: Irrelevant

[guolan27]

Here's my take on how to rule out answer choice (C).

Do we know whether cognitive psychotherapy is the ONLY form of psychotherapy that focuses primarily on changing the patient's conscious beliefs? No. There could be other forms not mentioned in the text. Should we concern ourselves with this? No, because it is does not matter at all.

This makes answer choice (C) completely irrelevant.

[LSAT Princess]

Couldn't it be understood as follows:

Premise 1: C.P focuses on changing a person's conscious beliefs
Premise 2: Only conscious beliefs are under a patient's direct conscious control

Conclusion: C.P is more likely to be effective at helping patients overcome psych problems.

But why would it be more effective? Only B answers this.

[kjjida9797]

Can someone evaluate my approach to differentiate B and D?

D also seem to indicate that to be effective, treatments need to change patient’s direct conscious control.

However, there is something amiss here because if we contrapositive this then we get
‘Change patient’s direct conscious control, some form of psychotherapy that FOCUSES on changing the patient’s UNCONSCIOUS can be effective.’

Clearly the argument is trying to show the difference between the two types of therapies, namely one that alters what’s directly under control (UC) and the other that does not (NUC).

Therapist is claiming that (UC) is more effective than (NUC) but with D assumed we cannot make this point because it's indicating that (NUC) too can be effective.

Any notes that might help?

[stacksdoe]

Alex hit the bullseye on this one.

One of the most effective strategies to answering any question is to eliminate the wrong answer, especially when your stuck between two.
It's really interesting that so many people were stuck on this, I guess most of us all are really close in how we reason.
Out of all the questions, this was one of the very few, if not the only one, that gave me fits. I was utterly confused between B and D, I just knew something was off. And here is what I missed to see:
If D is the correct answer choice, then it actually weeks the stimulus because it implies that cognitive therapy is NOT the only effective means, other therapies that focus on both unconscious and conscious beliefs could be just as effective. The last sentence in the stimulus is what allows this because it gives us the big premise: "since only conscious beliefs.....
My initially critic was ..well what it if it does both, so all in all, my attempt to cover the whole lead me to D which actually ends up weaking the argument, leaving B is the only possibility.
My initially problem with B is that it states "difficult" which doesn't outright dismiss the possibility of effectiveness, just makes it hard. And I know that strengthen varies in degree, I just needed to rule all other possibilities (answer choices); which I was unable to do, until now.

I really love this forum and I'm so grateful for it!
Alex thank you!

[StratosM31]

Hi,

didn't read most of the comments above, but I eliminated (D) (which seemed to be tempting to most people) relatively quickly and therefore let me briefly explain my thought process:

1.) Even if we ignore the necessary condition, it still does not strengthen (even if slightly, not nearly as much as (B)): who says, then, that cognitive psychotherapy has to be effective? Maybe it's also not effective as well. Where is the link between conscious control and effectiveness?

2.) The necessary condition could be satisfied. The stimulus says FOCUS on changing unconscious beliefs, doesn't have to mean they do it exclusively. If the ratio is 99 unconscious vs 1 conscious, then it "also helps change beliefs that are under the patient's direct conscious control".

[Laura Damone]

Solid reasoning, StratosM31!

[BensonC202]

13. (B)
Question Type: Strengthen the Conclusion
One way to strengthen an argument is to provide a piece of information that closes a gap in the argument. In other words, we can strengthen this argument by explicitly stating one of the assumptions. Let’s rearrange this argument in order to make the logic more transparent. Cognitive psychotherapy changes conscious beliefs. Other forms of psychotherapy change unconscious beliefs. Since only conscious beliefs are under the direct control of the patient, cognitive psychotherapy is likely to be more effective at treating psychological problems.

What’s the assumption? The author assumes that in order to be effective, a treatment must address mental processes that are under the control of the patient. This is easy to miss, but it’s an important assumption that is critical to the argument. We can strengthen the argument by making this assumption explicit. Answer (B) does this.

(A) weakens the argument.
(C) is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if it’s the only form of therapy that focuses on conscious beliefs. The argument deals only with cognitive psychotherapy vs. other forms of psychotherapy that do NOT focus on conscious beliefs.
(D) strengthens the argument by providing an additional piece of supporting evidence, but it does not strengthen as much as answer (B). An answer that fills a gap in the argument will generally strengthen the most (since the argument is weak with the gap).
(E) fails to provide any information comparing the two types of therapy.


#officialexplanation

Please allow me to elaborate the answer D.

Apparently, due to the fact that only the conscious beliefs are under the patient's direct control, so, Cognitive psychotherapy is more effect in changing a patient's conscious beliefs than in unconscious beliefs and desires.

We know that answer B perfectly strengthen the argument that if it is not difficult for a form of psychotherapy to be effective, it must be true that the psychotherapy be focusing on the mental states under patient's direct conscious control.

May we say that the answer D is not better than B could be reasoned that D's conditional statement could only prove the form of psychotherapy focusing on changing the patient's unconscious beliefs are desire can be effective only if it helps change beliefs under the patient's direct control; however, answer D does not strengthen the concept of comparability of effectiveness between 2 different forms of psychotherapy ?

Please let me know If I am right or wrong.

Deeply appreciate.