Self-study
Neuroscientists subjected volunteers with amusia—difficulty telling different melodies apart and remembering simple tunes—to shifts in pitch comparable to those that occur when someone plays one piano key and then another. ███ ██████████ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ █ ██████████ ███████ ███ ██████ ███ ███ ██████████ ████ ████ ██ █████ █████ █████████ ██ ███████ █████ ███ ████████ ██████ ███████ ██ ███████
Stimulus Summary7
Amusia is defined as difficulty telling different melodies apart and remembering simple tunes. The experiment tested two abilities in people with amusia: pitch perception and timing perception.
Pitch: Volunteers were played tones comparable to neighboring piano keys. They couldn't tell the tones apart.
Timing: Volunteers were played timed sequences of musical tones. They could track the sequences and notice slight changes in timing.
So we have people who struggle with melodies, and when we test two components of music, one component is broken and the other is working fine.
Anticipation
This is a Most Strongly Supported question, so we're looking for the answer best supported by the stimulus. We probably won't be able to predict the exact form of the correct answer, but we can note what the stimulus gives us to work with: people with amusia fail at pitch but succeed at timing.
20.
The statements above, if true, ████ ████████ ███████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███████████
a
People who are ██████ ██ ███████ █████ ██████████ ██ ██████████ █ ██████████ ██████████ ██ ███████
The stimulus tells us that people with amusia can perceive timing. It does not tell us they perceive timing better than people without amusia. "Compensate by developing a heightened perception" is a claim about how amusia individuals compare to non-amusia individuals, and we have zero information about that comparison. We only know how pitch perception and timing perception compare within people who have amusia.
b
Amusia results more ████ ██ █████████ ██ ███████ █████ ████ ████ ██ █████████ ██ ███████ ███████
The stimulus tells us that people with amusia can't discern pitch but can discern timing. If amusia were primarily a timing problem, we'd expect these volunteers to struggle with timing. They don't. If amusia were primarily a pitch problem, we'd expect them to struggle with pitch. They do. That pattern supports the claim that amusia is driven more by the pitch side than the timing side.
Note that (B) doesn't claim pitch is the only factor in amusia or that timing plays no role at all. It just says "more from...than from," which is a comparative claim. The experimental results, where pitch perception is broken and timing perception is intact, support that comparison. Also, if you don't like this answer, keep in mind that this isn't a Must Be True question.
c
People who are ██████ ██ ████ ███████ █████ ██ █████████ ███ ████ ██ ██ ██ ██ ███ ███████ ██ █ ██████ ██ ███████ ████ ███████
The experiment tested whether people with amusia could discern pitch shifts between individual tones. It found they couldn't. (C) claims these same people could discern pitch if the tones were embedded in a melody and they could rely on timing cues. That's an interesting hypothesis, but we have no evidence for it.
d
The ability to ████ ████████ █████ ███████ ██ ███ ███████████ ██ █████ █████ ███ ███ ██ ███ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ███████
Watch the extreme language:
e
Whereas perception of ██████ ███ ██████████ ██ ████████ ███████████ ██ █████ ██ ████ ██████ ███████
The stimulus describes what people with amusia can and can't perceive. It says nothing about whether either ability is learned or innate. (E) introduces a distinction (learned vs. innate) that the stimulus doesn't touch.