PrepTest 47, Section 2, Question 26
By Brandon Beaver | Published October 29, 2024
Type: Strengthen
Difficulty:
Explanations
The author concludes that producing characters automatically frees up mental resources. Why? Because researchers found a correlation between writing letters automatically and increased composition skills in their after-school study.
In other words, the author thinks that writing letters automatically indicates more freed-up mental resources, because writing letters automatically is correlated with improved handwriting.
We’re asked to strengthen this argument, so we need an answer choice that makes it more likely that producing characters automatically frees up mental resources.
Let’s see.
A
This doesn’t strengthen. All this tells us is that practice is correlated with writing letters automatically.
B
Nope. This suggests that the students predisposed to writing letters automatically might have had an advantage, not that their predisposition freed up resources for them to learn other things.
C
Bingo. This directly supports the link between automatic letter-writing and handwriting improvement. In other words, regardless of the students’ skills prior to the study, if they improved automatic letter writing during the study, they also improved handwriting skills during the study. That suggests the correlation might be causal.
D
Nah. All this does is confirm the sample quality, but this argument’s conclusion doesn’t directly contend with the sample’s quality. This would only be a strengthener if we had cause to suspect a bad sample.
E
No chance. This just reiterates that there’s a correlation between automatic letter writing and improved composition.
Passage
Researchers gave 100 first-graders after-school lessons in h
Question 26
Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the ar