Q6 - Psychologist: Thinking can occur without language.

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Role / Function

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Thinking can occur without language.
Evidence: pre-lingual 3 month olds can detect weird faces by comparing weird-face pictures with a mental picture of a normal face. That latter mental picture is some form of thought.

Answer Anticipation:
It is clearly "a" conclusion, since it is prefaced by "Thus". However, we would call it an intermediate/subsidiary/supporting conclusion, since it is a takeaway that helps us get to our ultimate takeaway of "thinking can occur without language". It has its own support (the 2nd to last sentence) and it provides support (for the 1st sentence).

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) YES! This describes a subsidiary conclusion. We can tell that the last sentence is "a" conclusion, since it begins with "Thus ...". And we can say that it supports the more general conclusion in the first sentence. Establishing that a thought of a typical human face exists in the minds of infants allows the author to draw her conclusion that "thinking can occur without language".

(B) The main conclusion attributed to the researchers is that "3 month old infants can detect anomalies in pictures".

(C) Almost. It's a subsidiary conclusion, not the main one.

(D) The author is never trying to refute the idea that infants lack language.

(E) I don't even know what this word jumble means. A hypothesis is a claim that explains. You don't explain a hypothesis ... You might support its plausibility. A hypothesis explains a given phenomenon. At any rate, this answer is again acting as though the whole paragraph is aimed at the last sentence, when the paragraph is actually aimed at defending the first sentence.

Takeaway/Pattern: When we're doing ID the Conclusion and Role/Function, we want to be pretty suspicious about ever accepting that the LAST idea is the main conclusion. It can certainly happen, but much more often the conclusion is said higher up, even as high as the first sentence. When we do Role/Function (and really almost no other time), we want to be looking out for Intermediate conclusions.

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