#9- Specific Reference, Weaken

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[cjj]

I was torn between A and C for this one. Why is it C?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi cjj,

Thanks for the question! The psychologists' interpretation is that kids not reporting the same thoughts as adults means no one can actually observe their thoughts directly. C challenges this by offering another explanation for why kids don't report the same thoughts; it isn't that no one directly knows their thoughts, it is just that kids can't communicate what they directly observe about their own thoughts.

A, on the other hand, doesn't really impact the interpretation at all. Even if some kids do as well as some adults, does that mean people aren't just inferring their thoughts? Nope! So, A doesn't really impact the psychologists' interpretation one way or the other.

Hope that helps!

[cjj]

Thanks for the explanation, Emily. I can definitely see that C is the best answer.

Regarding the psychologists interpretation, are they saying that no one can observe the children's thoughts? Or that only the children themselves cannot observe their own thoughts?

[James Finch]

Hi CJJ,

This is one passage where it may help to break the argument down into constituent parts. The argument being made in this paragraph is this:

Hypothesis: Human beings, both children and adults, know their own thoughts directly, noninferentially, and infallibly, but know the thoughts of others only inferentially.

Experimental Results: Children cannot describe their thoughts nearly as accurately as adults can.

Psychologists' Conclusion: Both children and adults know their own thoughts only inferentially, just as if they were trying to puzzle out the thoughts of others; adults become "experts" and make inferences so quickly they no longer can be recognized as inferences.

So to answer your question directly, the psychologists are positing that the thoughts of both children and adults are not known directly, even by those having the thoughts, but are always understood inferentially. It's just that adults have a lot more practice and have gotten really good at making those inferences so quickly that we didn't even realize that they were inferences.

Hope this clears things up!

[cjj]

Thanks, James! Yes, that clears things up.

[callmeclaire]

Hi.

I understand now why the answer is C which was my second choice, but I chose D. Why is D incorrect?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi callmeclaire!

Happy to address why answer choice (D) is incorrect. This question provides a line reference to lines 10-16, though addresses material beginning at least on line 7:

"n certain circumstances young children tend to misdescribe their own thoughts regarding simple phenomena while nonetheless correctly describing those phenomena. It seems that these children have the same thoughts that adults have regarding the phenomena but are much less capable of identifying these thoughts. Some psychologists argue that this indicates that one’s awareness of one’s own thoughts is every bit as inferential as one’s awareness of another person’s thoughts."

Answer choice (D) states, "Most young children cannot be expected to know the difference between direct and indirect access to one’s thoughts." Since this is a weaken question, it is important to identify the conclusion and the premises being marshaled as evidence in support of that conclusion. Here, the author appears to reach the following conclusion:

children misdescribe their own thoughts awareness of one's thoughts is inferential/indirect

However, it is possible, as suggested by answer (C), that they might misdescribe their thoughts for other reasons--for example, because they lack the language to describe adequately. Answer choice (D), by contrast, concerns whether or not the children knew the meaning of the words that psychologists and experimenters were using--namely, "direct" and "indirect" (inferential) access to one's thoughts. Even if the children being studied did not appreciate the meaning of this terminology, this doesn't address (and thus doesn't weaken) claims about what that research reveals. Here, the research is taken to show that access to one's own thoughts is indirect/inferential, and it would still show this whether or not the children being researched knew what "direct" versus "indirect" access to one's thoughts means. If (D) were true, it therefore wouldn't do anything to weaken the psychologists' conclusions about what the discussed experiments mean.