#18 - In an experiment, each of 200 randomly selected people was videotaped

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[roppo@ualberta.ca]

Can you provide an explanation on why this answer is correct.

Thank you

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Roppo,

This question is a Justify question.

The correct answer for a Justify question will, when added back into the argument, 100% prove the conclusion.

Basically, the correct answer + the premises = the conclusion.

Any answer that doesn't 100% prove the conclusion is wrong for Justify questions.

Often, Justify questions involve conditional reasoning, and the correct answer below is conditional.

The argument tells us the people in the experiment who gestured spoke more quickly and repeated themselves less. (Note that we do not know for certain that the gesturing caused the people to speak more quickly and repeat themselves less, only that these behaviors went together. This is what we call a correlation. It's helpful to recognize this as a correlation because that term appears in the correct answer.)

The conclusion is that gesturing helps speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

We need an answer that 100% gets us from the premise to the conclusion, no ifs, ands, or buts.

A possible prephrase could be:

If something is correlated with speaking more quickly and repeating oneself less, then it helps speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

That answer would get us from the premise to the conclusion.

Answer C does exactly this. The word "any" is a sufficient indicator, so the answer is basically saying "if a behavior is correlated with quicker speech and less repetition in speech, then it helps speakers find the phrases they want quickly."

Since we know that gesturing is correlated with quicker speech and less repetition in speech from the premises, then this answer gets us to the conclusion that gesturing helps speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

None of the other answers does this and therefore those are wrong.

Be careful with Answer D. While it is also a conditional statement, it contains a Mistaken Reversal of what we need. We need the sufficient condition to match with the premises and the necessary condition to match with the conclusion so that we can go from the premises to conclusion and not the other way around.

In Answer D, the sufficient condition matches the conclusion which is not what we need. Also, we don't know for sure that the behavior (gesturing) enables people to speak more quickly, only that it is correlated with speaking more quickly, which brings us back to Answer C.

[katnyc]

I got this question right. I want to ask about E - E looks wrong to me and worse than answers C and D. I am curious exactly why is it wrong because it looks weird to me but i cant figure out why. Thanks

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi kat,

Answer choice (E) is wrong because it doesn't connect to the conclusion about gesturing helping people find the phrases they want. In a justify question, we are looking for an answer choice that proves the conclusion. The idea of quickly finding phrases is brand new in the conclusion. Our correct answer choice must address finding phrases quickly, or it won't justify the conclusion. Answer choices (C) and (D) are the only answer choices that address that new aspect of the conclusion, so they are the only possible answer choices to consider.

Hope that helps!

[TootyFrooty]

Hi Roppo,

This question is a Justify question.

The correct answer for a Justify question will, when added back into the argument, 100% prove the conclusion.

Basically, the correct answer + the premises = the conclusion.

Any answer that doesn't 100% prove the conclusion is wrong for Justify questions.

Often, Justify questions involve conditional reasoning, and the correct answer below is conditional.

The argument tells us the people in the experiment who gestured spoke more quickly and repeated themselves less. (Note that we do not know for certain that the gesturing caused the people to speak more quickly and repeat themselves less, only that these behaviors went together. This is what we call a correlation. It's helpful to recognize this as a correlation because that term appears in the correct answer.)

The conclusion is that gesturing helps speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

We need an answer that 100% gets us from the premise to the conclusion, no ifs, ands, or buts.

A possible prephrase could be:

If a something is correlated with speaking more quickly and repeating oneself less, then it helps speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

That answer would get us from the premise to the conclusion.

Answer C does exactly this. The word "any" is a sufficient indicator, so the answer is basically saying "if a behavior is correlated with quicker speech and less repetition in speech, then it helps speakers find the phrases they want quickly."

Since we know that gesturing is correlated with quicker speech and less repetition in speech from the premises, then this answer gets us to the conclusion that gesturing helps speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

None of the other answers does this and therefore those are wrong.

Be careful with Answer D. While it is also a conditional statement, it contains a Mistaken Reversal of what we need. We need the sufficient condition to match with the premises and the necessary condition to match with the conclusion so that we can go from the premises to conclusion and not the other way around.

In Answer D, the sufficient condition matches the conclusion which is not what we need. Also, we don't know for sure that the behavior (gesturing) enables people to speak more quickly, only that it is correlated with speaking more quickly, which brings us back to Answer C.

Hi,

Could you please break in down in the form of conditional and premise/conclusion? I got this question correct but took a lot of time between D and C and I kind of just went with my hunch...

[Jeff Wren]

Hi TootyFrooty,

The premises show that hand gestures are correlated with quicker speech and less repetition. (As I mentioned in my earlier post, the premises don't use the word "correlation," so you need to recognize that it is showing one.)

The conclusion is that hand gestures help speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

To justify this argument, we want a conditional statement with the premise in the sufficient and the conclusion in the necessary.

In other words, if the premise is true, then the conclusion is true.

Here, a pre-phrase might be:

If hand gestures are correlated with quicker speech and less repetition, then hand gestures help speakers quickly find the phrases that they want.

While Answer C doesn't specifically mention hand gestures, that's okay because they would fall under "any form of behavior."

If you diagram Answer D, it is backward. It doesn't get you to the conclusion. It starts with the conclusion in the sufficient.