Q8 - While studying a large colony of macaque

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Inference (most strongly supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Some scientists got together and made faces and gestures at baby monkeys. The babies imitated only the ones that the adult monkeys also made.

Answer Anticipation:
There's a connection drawn between gestures made by humans and gestures made by adult monkeys, in that they're both imitated. That overlap is probably going to lead us to the answer.

Correct answer:
(E)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Degree. We know that they don't mimic everything they see, as they mimicked only some of the scientists' gestures.

(B) Out of scope. Lack muscle control? Nothing like that is brought up in the stimulus.

(C) Detail creep. While we learn that the adults use these gestures to interact with the babies, we don't know they do so to entertain them. Maybe it's to soothe them, or to teach them how to be an adult monkey.

(D) Out of scope. The argument doesn't give us enough information to get inside the baby monkeys' heads. We know they imitate them, but we don't know whether they think they're a different species.

(E) Bingo. We only tested four kinds of actions, so this answer is too strong to be something that must be true. In a most strongly supported question, though, we have enough support to state that these babies imitate only the actions that adult monkeys would take.

Takeaway/Pattern: Always be on the lookout for overlap. When looking at answers, don't spend too much time on ones that bring up new ideas not mentioned in the stimulus.

#officialexplanation

[LukeM22]

I was wondering if it would be possible to articulate what exact process allowed you to cross off D, but not E? Are they not both too strong, unsupported, and yet appealing because they're both plausible? Given that it's also unsupported, what exact quality does E have that makes it better than D? I understand that in "most supported" questions you won't always get a perfect answer; I just don't get how E is "better".

Thank you,

[ohthatpatrick]

I would say that (D) is wrong for a similar reason that (A) is wrong. It sort of has NEGATIVE support from the statements.

If baby macaques thought the scientists were adult M's, then why wouldn't they have copied ALL of the scientists' actions? Since they only copied the actions that adult M's actually used, the babies seem to be differentiating between what they expect out of an adult M and what they're getting from the scientists.

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A lot of Most Strongly Support inferences are sort of, "Solve the mystery of what's going on here".
Scientists were essentially puzzled by the fact that the baby monkeys imitated some, but not all, of the scientists' actions.

What could be the reason for why they imitated some, but not all? LOTS OF DIFFERENT THINGS! But we have to go with the available clues.

(E) matches up easily with the data, so it is supported.

(D) takes more effort to even match up ... BECAUSE the babies mistook the scientists for adult monkeys, they imitated only the adult-monkey gestures? That requires an additional assumption that "If I think you're X, I'll only imitate you when you're doing things I expect of X." That's kind of a weird, not-common-sense, rule. It's also hard to argue the babies have any idea of what to expect, since they're under a week old.