#26 - Researchers gave 100 first-graders after-school

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen-CE. The correct answer choice is (C)

The author understands the correlation between automatic writing of letters and composition skills as one of causation: because the students whose composition skills had improved the most also learned to write letters the most automatically, the latter must have caused the former by freeing up mental resources for it.

• Cause Effect
  
  Automatic writing → Frees up mental resources for other activities

It is entirely possible that those whose composition skills had improved the most may have been really strong at automatic letter writing even before the after-school lessons, which might suggest that the two skills are the result of a third, such as intelligence, diligence, or general facility with language and writing. There is also the possibility of a reverse causation at stake: becoming better at composition might have led to the more extensive practice handwriting and greater automatization of letter writing. You need to look for an answer choice that strengthens the causation either by reinforcing the relevance of the survey to the author's conclusion or by eliminating possible alternate causes for the given effect.

Answer choice (A): Since this answer choice does not deal with improvement in composition skills, it will not be useful in strengthening the author's argument.

Answer choice (B): As explained earlier, this could suggest an alternate cause for the stated effect: instead of freeing up mental resources for other activities, greater ability to write automatically may simply be the result of other mental traits that benefit both composition and handwriting.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice. By establishing a correlation between the group of students who improved the most in automatic letter writing and those who improved in their composition skills, this answer choice eliminates the possibility that automatic letter writing was an a priori given.

Answer choice (D): It is neither necessary nor beneficial to the argument that the first-graders studied were representative of first-graders generally. The conclusion is not about first-graders generally but about how certain mental faculties influenced others.

Answer choice (E): This answer choice might suggest a reverse cause-and-effect relationship and is therefore incorrect.

[atrumankim]

Hello Powerscore,

Why is answer A not correct again? You're saying that A does not deal with improvement in composition skills, therefore incorrect, but isn't "practice" in a handwriting class ... indicate composition improvement?

Also isn't answer C just prove that the causation was indeed reversed?

Thank you for your time and help here.

AK

[Shannon Parker]

Hey there AK,

Not in this case. In this case "writing letters automatically," and "composition" are two distinct skills. The author is arguing that the if a student is better at "writing letters automatically," then they improve the most on their "composition" skills because "writing letters automatically" "frees up mental resources for other activities."

Answer choice "A" provides a causal explanation for determining who increased their ability to "write letters automatically," (those who practiced the most) but does not address the relationship with increasing "composition" skills.

Answer choice "C" demonstrates the correlation between the two skills because as the ability to "write letters more automatically" went up so did the "composition" skill.

Hope this clears it up.

~Shannon

[smm]

Hi,

I have questions about answer choices C and D.

It seems to me that C isn't doing much more than restating the premise found in the second sentence of the stimulus. Doesn't the second sentence already establish a correlation between composition skills and automatic writing? If so, I'm not sure how C does much to strengthen the argument. As an aside: the answer I was originally looking for was something that showed the correlation suggested in the second sentence was actually a causal relationship.

As for D, I'm not sure how knowing that the sample observed is representative couldn't help the argument. Suppose we do not know D. Then it is possible that the group observed was abnormal with regard to writing and composition, which would make any observed relationship within this group suspect in general. D eliminates this weakness, does it not?

Thanks! Any insight would be much appreciated.

S

[Luke Haqq]

Hi smm!

Happy to try to help with this one.

Answer (C) seems close to being just a rewording of the second sentence. But (C) instead focuses on a different study--in (C), the group under consideration is those showing improvement in writing letters, while in the stimulus, the group under consideration is those who showed improvement in composition. In other words, I understood (C) to be suggesting that the 100 children were also studied from the perspective of using a different control group, and the results from that perspective further bolstered their argument that automatically producing characters frees up mental space for other activities (like composition).

You're right to point out that (D) is effectively saying that the sample data is representative, but it's not clear to me how that functions to strengthen the specific argument being made. Instead of not knowing (D), suppose that we actually know that the 100 students studied were not representative--for example, they might have all been from affluent schools, or only one region of the country. Even if it were the case that they were not representative, there'd still be a need for an explanation of the study's results (why do all students from that region who improve in automatic writing also improve in composition?), and the author of the stimulus provides the explanation that automatic letter-writing frees up mental space. So the representativeness or non-representativeness of the children might speak to the validity of the study itself, but not to the argument/conclusion that the author derives from the results of that study (and thus can't strengthen that argument that the author makes).

Hope that helps make some sense of it!

[bk1111]

Hi smm!

Happy to try to help with this one.

Answer (C) seems close to being just a rewording of the second sentence. But (C) instead focuses on a different study--in (C), the group under consideration is those showing improvement in writing letters, while in the stimulus, the group under consideration is those who showed improvement in composition. In other words, I understood (C) to be suggesting that the 100 children were also studied from the perspective of using a different control group, and the results from that perspective further bolstered their argument that automatically producing characters frees up mental space for other activities (like composition).

You're right to point out that (D) is effectively saying that the sample data is representative, but it's not clear to me how that functions to strengthen the specific argument being made. Instead of not knowing (D), suppose that we actually know that the 100 students studied were not representative--for example, they might have all been from affluent schools, or only one region of the country. Even if it were the case that they were not representative, there'd still be a need for an explanation of the study's results (why do all students from that region who improve in automatic writing also improve in composition?), and the author of the stimulus provides the explanation that automatic letter-writing frees up mental space. So the representativeness or non-representativeness of the children might speak to the validity of the study itself, but not to the argument/conclusion that the author derives from the results of that study (and thus can't strengthen that argument that the author makes).

Hope that helps make some sense of it!

Hi - I still don't really understand why C is correct. You mentioned that C differs from the stimulus in that it does not mention "composition skills", but it does. The only difference I see between the 2nd sentence and this answer choice is that the latter brings in a relative comparison of "greater." I still don't understand how it adds anything new to the argument overall though. Can you please explain? Also, I still don't completely understand (B) brings in a third factor or alternate cause. Thank you!

[James Finch]

Hi BK,

The stimulus gives us the following information:

composition skills most improved writing letters more automatically

and concludes from that information that

writing letters more automatically freed up mental resources

This is a reversal of the evidence we've been given.

(C) makes the conclusion more likely true by giving us the evidence that the given premise doesn't, which is that

writing letters most automatically composition skills most improved

so

writing letters most automatically freed up mental resources

Hope this clears things up!

[Blueballoon5%]

Hi James. I am a bit confused with your arrows. Are the arrows in your explanation (above) causal or conditional?

If the arrows are causal, wouldn't the first causal statement in the stimulus be reversed? (writing letters more automatically composition skills most improved)?

If the arrows are conditional, I don't understand how answer choice C fills in the gaps of the premises.

Moreover, I am not sure how the final arrow (of answer choice C, that 'writing letters most automatically freed up mental resources') helps fill in the gaps in the stimulus.

[Adam Tyson]

This question presents an interesting and challenging mixture of conditional and causal reasoning, Blueballoon, in that the second sentence is conditional, but the conclusion is causal. For the most part, we don't like to diagram causal arguments with arrows, because that leads to a lot of confusion (as evidenced by your question!), but sometimes we do it anyway, as we did here, just to be sure that our students are seeing that the cause leads to the effect.

So, to clarify, we have a conditional premise: children whose skills improved (that's sufficient) wrote more automatically (that's necessary). The author then concludes that there is a causal relationship - the necessary condition is a cause and the sufficient condition is an effect. He also brings into that conclusion a new idea, that of "freeing up" mental resources. In other words, if you don't have to think about your letter-writing, your brain has the bandwidth to work on other stuff, like how to compose. Being automatic apparently frees things up, allowing you to work on, and get better at, other things. Think of "freed up mental resources" not as a totally separate thing, but as an umbrella concept under which "getting better at composition" is one possible outcome. That's why James' last arrow works - freed up mental resources includes having those resources available to apply to improving one's composition skills.

Ultimately, it's the causal conclusion that we want to improve. Answer choice C helps us by showing us a strong correlation between the alleged cause and the alleged effect - as writing letters becomes more automatic, composition improves. Now, this correlation doesn't PROVE the causal claim, because correlation never proves causation, but it sure helps (by showing that where the cause increases, the effect increases, a variant of "where the cause is present, so if the effect"). A positive correlation like this thus strengthens the causal claim in a way that no other answer choice here does.

I hope that helps! If not, is there another answer that you were leaning towards? If so, tell us about that answer and your analysis, and that will help us better understand your thought process and perhaps give you a more insightful and helpful answer.

[HowardQ]

Hi,

I understand how answer C completes the causal premise and indicate both cause and effect occur together, that should fill the gap in the passage. However, I don't understand how B is not correct. Although B does not directly relate to the premise of the passage, it provides more support for the conclusion. Answer B shows that people with the best automatic writing skills also are the greatest in terms of improving composition skills. This includes the argument in C, and in addition, this answer strengthens the conclusion by strengthening the relationship in the outermost spectrum. The only flaw I see with my reasoning is that the word "producing" in the conclusion, and a skill already mastered is not produced?

Thanks,