#21 - Most people who become migraine sufferers as adults were prone to bouts of depression as child

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (A).

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

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

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

[ibrapple]

Hey first time poster.

I had narrowed down the answer to A and B, but ultimately chose B because of time. I was confident in the answer until checking the answer which indicates A. I was wondering, is it because of the wording of the conclusion in B being "treated the dog badly" is not the same as "ill-treated" offered earlier? I can see now that A is the right answer, but I wanted to confirm if it just was the wording and not also having wrongly identified the parallel logic flaw.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi ibrapple

The issue in answer choice (B) is that it's not flawed in the same way as the stimulus. The second statement follows from the first in that they are going in the same order. Most vicious dogs were ill-treated when young means that if you find a vicious dog, it was likely to have been ill-treated when young. The term "most" means it's over 50% of the vicious dogs, and the word "likely" means that it is over 50% likely to be the case. That matches, and thus it's not the same flaw in the stimulus.

The stimulus and answer choice (A) both try to reverse the "most" relationship. Just because most people who are migraine sufferers were prone to depression in childhood does not mean that most people prone to depression in childhood would become migraine sufferers. That's flipping the relationship. Answer choice (A) makes this same flip.

Hope that helps!