LSAT 120 – Section 1 – Question 26

LSAT 120 - Section 1 - Question 26

October 2005

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT120 S1 Q26
+LR
Strengthen +Streng
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
4%
157
B
20%
162
C
52%
165
D
20%
162
E
4%
157
145
163
180
 +Hardest 145.819 +SubsectionMedium

Researchers gave 100 first-graders after-school lessons in handwriting. They found that those whose composition skills had improved the most had learned to write letters the most automatically. This suggests that producing characters more automatically frees up mental resources for other activities.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author concludes that producing characters more automatically frees up mental resources for other activities. This is based on a study of 100 first-graders who received after-school lessons in handwriting, which showed that those whose composition skills had improved the most had learned to write letters the most automatically.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that in the study, the improvement in how automatically students could write letters contributed to improved composition skills. The author also assumes that the mechanism underlying this relationship was that writing letters more automatically freed up mental resources that could be used for composition. Another assumption is that the correlation observed among the students who composition skills had improved the most also existed for other students who had improved their composition skills.

A
Among the first-graders who received the after-school lessons in handwriting, those who practiced the most learned to write letters the most automatically.
(A) tells us why the students who learned to write letters most automatically were able to do so. But this doesn’t help connect writing letters automatically to improved composition skills.
B
The first-graders who wrote letters the most automatically before receiving the after-school lessons in handwriting showed the greatest improvement in their composition skills over the course of the lessons.
We already know there’s a correlation in the study between the most improved composition skills and learning to write letters the most automatically. (B) doesn’t reveal any new information that suggests a causal connection.
C
Over the course of the lessons, the first-graders who showed greater improvement in their ability to write letters automatically also generally showed greater improvement in their composition skills.
This strengthens by showing that the correlation observed among the ones who had learned to write letters the most automatically was also observed among the broader group.
D
Before receiving the after-school lessons in handwriting, the 100 first-graders who received the lessons were representative of first-graders more generally, with respect to their skills in both handwriting and composition.
Representativeness wasn’t an issue because the author’ didn’t assert that every first-grader could achieve the same results observed in the experiment. The conclusion was simply that there’s a causal relationship between writing letters more automatically and freeing mental resources.
E
Among the first-graders who received the lessons in handwriting, those who started out with strong composition skills showed substantial improvement in how automatically they could write letters.
We already know there’s a correlation in the study between the most improved composition skills and learning to write letters the most automatically. (E) doesn’t reveal any new information that suggests a causal connection.

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LSAT PrepTest 120 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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