LSAT 114 – Section 2 – Question 09

LSAT 114 - Section 2 - Question 09

October 2002

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT114 S2 Q09
+LR
+Exp
Strengthen +Streng
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Sampling +Smpl
A
92%
166
B
0%
154
C
2%
159
D
1%
157
E
4%
159
122
135
147
 +Easier 145.502 +SubsectionMedium

During the three months before and the three months after a major earthquake in California, students at a college there happened to be keeping a record of their dreams. After experiencing the earthquake, half of the students reported dreaming about earthquakes. During the same six months, a group of college students in Ontario who had never experienced an earthquake also recorded their dreams. Almost none of the students in Ontario reported dreaming about earthquakes. So it is clear that experiencing an earthquake can cause people to dream about earthquakes.

Summarize Argument
The author concludes that experiencing an earthquake can cause people to dream about earthquakes. This is based on a study where students in California who had experienced an earthquake later dreamed about earthquakes, while students in Ontario who hadn’t experienced an earthquake didn’t dream about earthquakes.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the students in California hadn’t dreamed about earthquakes before experiencing one. If that were the case, then the connection between experiencing an earthquake and dreaming about earthquakes would be tenuous.

A
Before the California earthquake, no more of the students in California than of those in Ontario recorded dreams about earthquakes.
Since the students in California were no more likely to dream about earthquakes before the earthquake struck, the earthquake seems to have caused the dreams. This strengthens the causal relationship.
B
The students in California were members of a class studying dreams and dream recollection, but the students in Ontario were not.
This weakens the author’s argument. Perhaps the students in Ontario didn’t remember their earthquake dreams because they hadn’t studied dream recollection.
C
Before they started keeping records of their dreams, many of the students in California had experienced at least one earthquake.
We don’t care about other earthquakes. We know that the students dreamed of earthquakes after the one that struck, and we’re trying to strengthen the causal relationship between those dreams and that earthquake.
D
The students in Ontario reported having more dreams overall, per student, than the students in California did.
We don’t care about overall dreams. We know the students in Ontario didn’t dream about earthquakes.
E
The students in Ontario who reported having dreams about earthquakes recorded the dreams as having occurred after the California earthquake.
Perhaps those students heard about the earthquake and dreamed about it. The fact remains that the vast majority of students in Ontario didn’t dream about earthquakes.

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LSAT PrepTest 114 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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