#4 - For newborns of age four to six weeks whose mothers

[BrookeLSATQUEEN]

I chose answer c which is correct because none of the other answers made sense. But can someone please explain why it goes from infants to babies. I feel like babies is extreme wording, as it’s talking about babies as a whole. How can we prove from the passage without making an assumption? I thought we were meant to avoid such answers in inferences. Are we allowed to make these assumptions when it says “most reasonably supported”
It’s just confusing because in the past these answers have been wrong.. so how do you know when to accept exteme?

Passage qualified by saying 4-6 weeks. A baby can be 4-6 weeks but a baby is also older or younger, so answer choice c is talking about babies as a whole.. especially since passage doesn’t even mention word babies. It jumps from newborns to babies

[Adam Tyson]

Think about that question stem, Queen: which of the answer choices is "most reasonably supported" by the information? It's not asking which answer absolutely must be true; it's asking which one, of the five, gets more support from the facts than any of the others.

If you were trying to prove answer C about babies generally, wouldn't the stimulus help? The stimulus does support that answer, even if it doesn't completely prove it. Maybe it's not true for older babies, but maybe it is? Nonetheless, the stimulus could be used as a premise to support that claim. And importantly, the other answers are even more extreme than answer C, or they require information that we just don't have. Answer C is pretty close to what the stimulus shows us, and it's not too big a leap from the information provided to the claim in that answer choice.

We sometimes hear these questions referred to as "soft" Must Be True questions. That's because the correct answer doesn't have to be true; it's just a not-entirely-unreasonable inference based on what we read. Don't put too much pressure on the answer choices by requiring them to be either completely proven or else losers, because often that will mean throwing out the correct answer. Instead, thinking of them like a reverse-Strengthen question, where the stimulus strengthens the answer choice, rather than the answer strengthening the argument.

[Mo28_28]

Hi
I have a question about the correct answer choice.
While the argument is about newborns whose mothers have been the primary caregiver, the generalization in answer C includes other newborns whose primary caregivers have not been their mothers. This generalization obviously is beyond what the argument says.
Please tell me your thoughts on this.

[Dana D]

Hey Mo,

Newborn and baby can be reasonably understood to be synonyms. After all, 'newborn' is really just an abbreviated version of 'newborn baby', and you would never consider saying a newborn is anything besides a baby (versus a toddler, teen, adult, etc).

Hope that helps!