Page 1-13 Question 10 (Testprep lessons one through four)

[akatormubarez]

We skipped question 10 during class. When I did it, I wasn't sure why the answer was E. I thought outside information was not allowed in must be true questions and therefore selected B. Let me know if you need me to write out the question. Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

That's a good one, and new information is the difference between those two answer choices. Let's look at both:

Answer B talks about the diverse symptoms associated with addiction to a particular psychoactive substance. If the answer had limited itself to talking about caffeine, we could accept that as following logically from the stimulus, because we were told about several symptoms associated with that particular substance. The problem, though, is that the answer goes too far by applying itself to ANY specific psychoactive substance, and saying that a diverse range of symptoms is TYPICAL. That is new info - for all we know, caffeine is the only one that results in such diversity, and the others, whatever they are, each have only one symptom.

My guess is that your problem with E had to do with the discussion of alcohol. Since there was no mention of it in the stimulus, it felt like new info, right? The authors were careful, though, not to treat the info about alcohol as being true - they qualified it by saying "if". It could have been any substance - if chocolate cake is a physically addictive psychoactive substance, or if saltine crackers are, or if new car smell is, etc. By treating it as a hypothetical, rather than as a fact, they cover their bases nicely. In this way it is very much like question 8 on the same page, about raising body temp by taking a warm bath. Here, since we know from the stimulus that there are as many caffeine consumers as users of any other such substance, then we can safely make statements like "IF so and so is such a substance, THEN there aren't more that consume it as consume caffeine.

Hope that helped, and that you are enjoying your class!