#25 - The availability of television reduces the amount of

[Administrator]

Question #25: Parallel. The correct answer choice is (A).

The obligatory evils-of-TV question makes a predictable point:

Premise—When TV is made unavailable, parents and children read more.

Premise—When TV is made available again, parents and children read less.

Conclusion—TV reduces the amount of reading children do.

In a nutshell, the author observes that TV watching and reading are closely correlated, and draws a causal conclusion on the basis of that observation:

TV watching (cause) Reduce reading (effect)

Two observations establish the correlation:

• When the cause does not occur, the effect does not occur;
• When the cause occurs, the effect also occurs.

To parallel this type of reasoning, look for an answer choice in which a correlation between two independent activities or occurrences is used as a basis for inferring a causal relationship between them.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. In this argument, money supply and interest rates appear to be closely correlated: when one of them fluctuates, so does the other; when one is kept constant, so is the other. Thus, the author concludes, constant money supply stabilizes interest rates, i.e. it causes interest rates to be stable:

Money supply (cause) Interest rates (effect)

Answer choice (B): This is an attractive answer choice, because the premises establish a perfect correlation between consuming candy between meals and feeling hungry: when candy is consumed, children don’t feel hungry; but when candy is not consumed, they do feel hungry. Unfortunately, the conclusion amounts to a recommendation to eat healthy meals, which has no parallel in the stimulus. The argument fails the Match the Conclusion test, and is therefore incorrect.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice presents a causal chain between pollution, carbon dioxide, and industrial pollution, concluding that industrial pollution causes global warming:

Pollution (cause) CO2(effect/cause) Global warming (effect)

The original argument does not rely on a causal chain of events in reaching its conclusion. So, even if the conclusion matches the causal element we are looking to find, this answer choice fails to match the premises of the original argument and is therefore incorrect.

Answer choice (D): This is close. The causal reasoning in the conclusion matches that in the original argument (factors other than candidates’ records of political achievement affect voting behavior):

Other factors (cause) Voting behavior (effect)

However, the proper way to support this conclusion would have been to observe that a factor other than one’s record (one’s confidence, for instance) correlates with whether or not one gains or loses voters: candidates who project confidence gain voters, whereas those who do not project confidence lose voters. This observation is almost made, but not quite: having a “supercilious facial expression” is not quite the same thing as lacking in confidence.

Answer choice (E): Hopefully you were able to eliminate this answer choice relativelly quickly, because its premises describe a vicious circle, or a “feedback loop,” between reading less and doing other activities: each one reinforces the other.

Reading less Doing other stuff

This cycle has no parallel in the original argument. For answer choice (E) to be correct, the author should have observed that when people are busy doing other stuff, they read less; but when they have nothing else to do, they read more. The premises establish no such correlation.

[cecilia]

Hi - i tussled between (A) and (B) on this.

I see why (A) is correct but can someone verify why (B) is incorrect please? Is (B) incorrect because of the slight term shift with "feels hungry"? Would it have been a better answer if it said "when they don't have candy their appetite is not disrupted/they eat their meals?? Was "feels hungry" not specific enough?

Unfortunately, I took the apparently (erroneous) leap of inferring that "feels hungry" was equivalent to having a normal appetite.

Thanks in advance Powerscore.

[Ricky_Hutchens]

Hi Cecilia,

You can actually eliminate B for two reasons. First, the stimulus never attempts to provide an explanation of the relationship. The availability of television has an impact on reading levels but it never tries to tell us why. But answer choice B dives right into explaining why candy disrupts a child's appetite.

Second, answer choice B flip flops the cause and effect relationship in the last sentence. Notice that the stimulus is always about how television affects reading levels, but B starts out talking about how eating candy affects appetites then concludes with a sentence that says that eating healthy reduces the craving for candy. Since the stimulus never does this, the answer choice can't either.

Hope that helps,

Ricky Hutchens

[cecilia]

Thanks Ricky.

[ShannonOh22]

I'm still a little confused by how E should have been eliminated "quickly"...I saw it as mirroring the stimulus pretty identically...

Stimulus: The availability of television reduces the amount of reading children do.
E) Adults read less than they once did because there are so many other activities to divert them.

Stimulus: "When television is made unavailable, a nearly universal increase in reading...is reported. When television is available again, the level of reading relapses to its previous level"
E) "This can be seen from the fact that the more time they spend on such other activities, the less they read. Conversely, the less they read, the more time they spend on such other activities."

If you substitute "television" for "many other activities", the arguments seem to be the same...both are circular and inane, and both incorrectly assume causation where there is only correlation.

Can someone please help explain why E is wrong?

[Paul Marsh]

Hi Shannon! I think the first post in this thread does a good job of explaining the basic structure of the reasoning used by the stimulus. If I were making an outline of the stimulus's reasoning, it would look like this.

First premise: When A (watching more TV) does not occur, B (reading less) does not occur. (This is the second sentence of the stimulus)
Second premise: When A does occur, B occurs. (This is the third sentence of the stimulus)
Conclusion: Therefore A causes B. (This is the first Sentence of the stimulus)

As you pointed out, the flaw is that the argument is making a conclusion based upon Causal Reasoning. So I am looking for an answer choice that makes a causal conclusion based on 2 premises that mirror the ones above.

You are right that the conclusion of answer choice (E) is a good approximation of the conclusion of our stimulus. They both form a clear causal link. And the second sentence of (E) does indeed match up pretty well with our second premise (When A does occur, B occurs). But the third sentence of (E) does not match up with out first premise (When A does not occur, B does not occur). For (E) to be a good answer choice, the third sentence would have to read something like "When they don't spend time on other activities, they read more."

In answer choice (A), on the other hand, the premises and conclusion all match up with the stimulus very well.

As an additional note, I tend to be very wary when an answer choice for Parallel / Parallel Flaw questions is the only one that mirrors the subject matter of the stimulus (like here, how they both talk about activities resulting in decreasing levels of reading). It is usually a trap answer for people that are just looking for anything similar between answer choice and stimulus. Not a hard and fast rule, just something to watch out for. Hope that helps!

[rboehm22]

Does the order of the stimulus matter in Parallel Method/Flaw questions? Since the stimulus goes from C --> P1 --> P2, my eyes were trained for an answer that began with a conclusion, so A got lost. Should the flaw here (that a causal claim was derived from two correlative statements) be the main driver in what to look for in answers?

[Robert Carroll]

rboehm,

The order of presentation of premises and conclusion never matters, so that's never something to look for.

The main things to consider are the method of reasoning used (here, the flaw of using premises about correlation to prove a conclusion about causation, and more specifically, two premises, each showing a different aspect of the correlation), the certainty of the conclusion, the certainty of the premises, whether the argument is good and bad, and the abstract nature of the argument. The "correlation to causation" method seems very distinctive and would be my main focus here.

Robert Carroll