This is the second passage from this prep test and this one as we can see is an AB passage.

So this is sort of new but you know, June 2007, I suppose it's not that new anymore,

but all the LSATs moving forward have AB passages.

But don't worry, they test on exactly the same thing.

Reading comprehension is still reading comprehension.

They're not like all of a sudden testing you on a new set of skills or anything like that.

So the only thing that you do differently,

and this is something we go into more detail, I suppose, in our full course,

and I suppose there are a lot of other lessons that I can't presume that you...

I can't presume you already went through our reading comprehension curriculum,

which means I'll just be sort of summoning those lessons as needed

and hopefully I'll be able to explain succinctly.

Obviously, I don't have time to go into depth like I would in our reading comp curriculum.

But anyway, so for AB passage, what I do is I scan the questions quickly.

It doesn't apply here, but sometimes, you know, on AB passages,

some of the prep tests, you'll see like say question 10 that asks just about passage B.

So it doesn't ask about passage A at all, right?

Whereas all the other questions ask about both A and B,

which is the vast majority of questions.

They need you to consider both information from both passage A and B together.

So if 10 asks just about B, then what I would do is I wouldn't read A first.

I would just forget about A.

And I would just, you know, read B first.

And then having read just B, knowing nothing about the information in A,

I'm able to answer question 10 faster and more accurately

because I promise you in questions like that,

there are answer choices that call upon information from the other passage,

which those, you'll just look at those answers, you'll be like,

what, I, because you haven't read them, so you won't fall into that trap,

which is a really great strategy, but doesn't always work.

Like for example, this passage and this set of questions,

every single question asks about both passages.

Okay, so let's read this together.

And, you know, like I said, I'll just, I guess, do quick lessons on the theory,

on the ideas that you need to know.

So the two passages discuss recent scientific research on music.

Okay, great.

So we know already that this is going to be a science passage.

A science passage which takes for its subject matter music.

So something you need to know about all science passages on LSAT,

they all have this structure, which they borrow from science,

of phenomenon and hypothesis.

So pretty much every science passage is going to talk about,

hey, we identified this phenomenon, this thing that actually occurs in our world.

And we don't know why it occurs.

Why does it happen?

And it's begging for an explanation.

And we call this explanation a hypothesis, which is what scientists do.

They come up with a hypothesis.

They're like, oh, you don't know why this phenomenon exists?

Let me come up with a causal story for why this phenomenon exists.

So that's my hypothesis.

And of course, some other scientists are like, well, you know, you are wrong.

My hypothesis is better.

My hypothesis explains phenomenon.

So it's sort of constant battling out of hypotheses to explain phenomenon.

So you really, really want to keep that in mind when you're reading,

when you realize you're in a science passage territory.

Because science passages tend to give students sort of just the most trouble.

But I think with this framework, it actually helps a lot.

It helps that you get to hang stuff on it.

OK, so let's read the passage.

Did music and human language originate separately or together?

That's the question.

So see, already we've identified the phenomenon.

Phenomenon is the existence of music in existence of human language.

And we're trying to answer the question of whether or not they originated together

or separately.

So both systems, music and human language, that's the two systems

that they're talking about.

Both systems use intonation.

By the way, this is what we call, I know this is a very simple example of this,

but this is what we call in our lessons, in our grammar lessons,

referential phrasing.

In reading, there are a couple of ways for the test writers

to lose you as you're reading.

And I know we all sort of read, and then 20, 30 seconds later,

our eyes have moved from here to here, but our brain has no processing,

had not done any processing at all for the past 20 seconds.

So that's called getting lost.

And they have very, very mechanical ways of losing you that reading passages do.

One of which you see right here is the use of referential phrasing.

Both systems, doesn't actually say anything.

All it does is it points to something that was talked about previously.

So whenever, and like I said, this is an easy example of that,

but there are plenty of hard ones.

I don't know, maybe we'll see one later.

But every time you encounter referential phrasing,

make sure you actually go back to what it's referring to.

Otherwise, you will get lost.

So okay, so here it says, both systems, music and language,

use intonation and rhythm to communicate emotion.

All right, so those are, there's like one point of similarity.

Both can be produced vocally or with tools, another point of similarity.

And people can produce both music and language silently to themselves.

So three points of similarity is what the first paragraph tells us.

Right, so we're opening up the conversation of,

did music and human language originate together or separately?

And at this point, you know, all we have is three points of similarity.

I don't, I mean, maybe together, I guess?

I don't know, but you always want to try to anticipate where the passage is going to go.

If for nothing else, just to keep your mind on task and keep yourself focused.

Try to anticipate what the next paragraph is going to say.

So let's read the next paragraph.

vastly complicated neurological system for processing sound.

See, we've posed the question already.

Did music and human language originate together or separately?

Now we're getting details about the empirical world,

about facts, about observations, data.

We did some brain imaging scans.

This is fact.

Music and language are part of one large, vastly complicated neurological system for processing sound.

Okay?

So it seems like they're leaning towards the answer of same.

It seems like it, but I don't want to say it.

Until they say it, I'm not going to put words in the author's mouth.

But this is all the process of staying engaged and trying to anticipate.

In fact, fewer differences than similarities exist between the neurological processing of the two.

This statement I had to read twice because this is what we call a comparative statement.

In our grammar lessons, we teach how to make sense of comparative statements.

So here, fewer differences than similarities exist between neurological processing of the two.

See, another referential phrasing.

Processing of the two meaning music versus language.

So they're saying in the neurological processing of music and language,

there are differences in how they're processed and there are similarities in how they're processed.

Which one is more?

Are there more differences than similarities or are there fewer differences than similarities?

You see, and the answer is there are fewer differences than similarities.

So in the neurological processing of music and language,

they actually share way more things in common than they do not in common.

So very similar.

Okay?

And let's keep reading here.

The next sentence says one could think of the two activities as different radio programs.

As soon as I see this, I think to myself, okay, this is called analogy.

And, you know, we talk a lot about arguments by analogy in LR lessons.

But as you can see, it appears it's relevant also for the RC lesson, reading comp lesson.

So your processing of music and language is not like a radio program.

I mean, your brain is not a radio.

Music and language are not broadcasts.

But, you know, in some ways, they're similar.

So we could say that you could think of the two as different radio programs.

So music is one radio program.

Language, like radio is like, or rather, music is like the classic, you know, classic music channel.

And human language is like the talk, you know, news talk show channel.

Two different radio programs that can be broadcast over the same hardware, meaning your radio, which would be your brain.

That's the analogy here.

Okay?

So one noteworthy difference, though, is that generally speaking, so they talk about same, same, you know, three similarities, same part of the brain, very similar processing, an analogy to sort of make it clear, and then one difference.

Right?

They talk about one difference.

One noteworthy difference, though, is that generally speaking, people are better at language than music.

So people are better at language.

Music, anyone can listen easily, language, anyone can listen easily.

But most people do not perform music well.

Right?

Yeah, most, I mean, you know, toss someone a guitar and see how they do.

And in many cultures, composition, now this is beyond performance, this is composing, composing music, creating music, is left to specialists.

And that's true.

Whereas in language, by contrast, we listen, we perform, and we compose.

You know, when we compose, like, when you think of a sentence, that's composing language.

And then when you speak the sentence, that's performing language.

So that's the one difference.

So really, so with the first paragraph and the second paragraph, you know, let's remember to apply our, what we call our memory method, which I talked a little bit about in the first passage.

You want to sum up the content of the paragraphs as you read on.

That way, it aids your short-term memory.

So first, we pose a question.

The music and language originate together or separately?

Very, three things very similar in music language.

Second paragraph tells us that it seems like it's trending towards the answer of originate together because there's so many things that are similar.

But the same part of your brain process it, process music language, and there's just sort of one noteworthy difference.

Okay, let's take a look at the last paragraph.

Now, you always want to do this.

Whenever they, you know, the new paragraph, you want to try to link it up.

How do we know that they share neurological basis?

Well, that's this stuff that they're talking about, the same neurological system of processing sound.

So given what we already know from paragraph two, it appears that music and language evolve together, together, as brain size increase over the course of hominid evolution.

So here's, finally, we get the author's hypothesis.

And the phenomenon, the question poses together, separately, and the author's answers, you know, together.

Some, I don't know, some other, I don't even know what, evolutionary biologist, linguist, might answer differently.

Maybe even neurobiologist, but anyway.

So this author is telling us that it's together, as brain size increase over the course of hominid evolution.

Okay, but the primacy of language over music, we can observe today, right, the author saying language has primacy over music.

Now, what does that mean?

What does that mean, language have primacy over music?

It just means that it probably, I mean, you have to use your imagination, right, because he doesn't actually explain.

And this is a huge part of reading comprehension, part of comprehending what you're reading.

You have to, if something's a little unclear, like this word primacy, you have to start making up what possibly it could mean.

So I'm thinking, well, we use language way more than we use music, or we engage with language way more than we engage with music.

You know, when you read emails, when you talk to someone, when you read anything online, right, and how often do you listen to music?

Certainly less than how often you engage in language.

So I think that's what primacy means.

But anyway, so he's saying that this primacy suggests that language, not music, was a primary function natural selection operated on.

So the idea is that, okay, so now we think it's together, but language is obviously way more functional than music is.

So the author thinks that what happened was music, because it didn't have a lot of adaptive value, just coattailed off of language.

Because they sort of, you know, as we said, they're processed in the same part of the brain.

So the idea is that if language conferred a lot of survival advantage and was selected, music just happened to got carried along with it.

That's his hypothesis.

So that's the, you know, the rest of this just details of the hypothesis.

All right, so we actually have a pretty good understanding of the first passage.

A question is posed, the music and language evolve separately or together, and we have some empirical data, some evidence,

and then we, to support this hypothesis, that they evolve together, and there's some details about this hypothesis.

Okay, so now we want to read passage B, and the whole time you want to be thinking about how is passage B related to passage A.

How are they related? And there's so many ways in which passages can be related.

But let's sort of keep that question in mind as we read this.

So passage B says, Darwin claimed that since neither the enjoyment nor capacity of producing music and notes are faculties of the least practical use to man,

so enjoying music, producing music, but it's just practically not useful to man,

they, referring to, let's see, what is this? I guess the enjoyment, they referring to the enjoyment and the capacity, referential phrasing.

So the enjoyment and the capacity of producing music must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed, he being man.

So the idea is that Darwin can't explain how music came to be, because his way of explaining it is, you know, like evolutions, survival advantage.

But it doesn't have any survival advantage, no practical use.

So he thinks, Darwin thinks it's mysterious why we have this capacity for music.

So I, being the author, suggests that the enjoyment and capacity to produce are faculties of indispensable use to mothers and their infants.

So whereas Darwin said the enjoyment and capacity, they are not very practical,

the author says, actually, they're totally essential.

They're indispensable to mothers and infants, and that it is the emotional bond created by the interaction of mother-child, right,

this emotional bond via musical notes, via enjoying and producing, I should have circled producing, not capacity,

musical notes that creates this musical bond, which is indispensable to mothers and their infants,

and the interaction of mother-child that we discover the evolutionary origin of human music.

So the author thinks that he has, you see, it's a little different from passage A already.

You know, I said always keep in mind how it's related.

Passage A says, what is the, you know, you ask the author of passage A, how did music come to evolve?

Well, it rode on the coattails of language.

Language was selected by natural selection, it had a lot of advantage, so it was selected,

and music, because it, you know, sort of operated in the same part of the brain,

just got selected as sort of auxiliary thing that just happened.

Whereas the author of passage B doesn't think so.

The author of passage B says music got selected, see, here's the evolutionary origin,

because of the interaction of mother and child.

So that's his hypothesis, you see, it's different from author A's hypothesis.

So, okay, second paragraph says, even excluding lullabies, so, you know, I kind of want to,

so at this point I'm thinking you're probably going to go into detail about this hypothesis, right?

I mean, this hardly is, well, I just don't know very much.

so what the author is doing is, well, look, obviously there are lullabies, right?

Mothers sing to their infants lullabies, so that's one obvious use.

I don't want to have to talk about that, but let's talk about things that are not so obvious, right?

Human mothers and infants under six months of age engage in ritualized sequential behaviors

involving vocal, facial, bodily interactions.

So this is stuff that's not lullabies, other types of interactions.

Using face-to-face mother-infant interaction filmed at 24 frames per second,

researchers have shown, so he's giving us data now,

he's giving us empirical evidence to support his hypothesis.

What does the researcher have to show?

Mother and infants jointly construct mutually improvised interaction

in which each partner tracks the action of others.

So this is a very, very long sentence.

So that's how, I guess that's how they are interacting,

and I don't really see why this supports this hypothesis.

It just, I mean, this just says mothers and infants, like, you know,

they improvise interactions, but like, how is this musical anyway?

Such episodes, ah, referential phrasing, referring to these things,

such episodes last from one half second to three seconds and are composed of musical elements.

There you go. So that's why this is relevant.

I mean, just reading the sentence, you're thinking, like, how is this relevant?

But it's because when they're doing this, such episodes, referential phrasing,

there are musical elements involved, variations in pitch, rhythm, timbre, volume, tempo.

So these are all the musical elements.

Okay, great. So we have our hypothesis that music developed

because of the emotional bond it created between mother and child.

That's the evolutionary origins of music.

And then that's the author's hypothesis.

To back it up, he gives you some research from scientists that study mother-child interactions

to say evidence to back up this hypothesis.

So then the last paragraph, what evolutionary advantage would such behavior have?

more details about the hypothesis, because the hypothesis at this point just, well,

it's evolutionary advantage of emotional bond, evolutionary advantage, mother-child.

Okay, but then that's not a lot of detail, you see.

In what specific particular way is there evolutionary advantage?

So I think that's what this last paragraph is going to talk about.

In the course of hominid evolution, brain size increased rapidly.

Oh, great, that's something actually they, you know, this sort of offhand remembered.

That passage A also said right up here, brain size.

Anyway, so the reason is because, you know,

once you start getting familiar with these questions, they ask a lot of questions like that.

Which one of the following statements would both authors agree with?

Usually the right answer is something that they both have said.

But anyway, contemporaneously, the increase in bipedality,

which just walking on two legs, caused birth canal to narrow.

This resulted in hominid infants being born ever more prematurely,

leaving them much more helpless at birth.

So all this stuff is just like, okay, so brain size got bigger,

people started walking upright, humans were born smaller,

meaning they're more helpless at birth.

Helplessness necessitates longer maternal care.

So what? How does this get to the point?

Where is the music?

Under such conditions, under all of this stuff, referential phrasing again,

the emotional bonds created in the pre-musical mother-infant interactions

we observe in homo sapiens today would have conferred considerable evolutionary advantage.

So what I did there was I just, you know, usually when we encounter,

and this is another grammar lesson, when we encounter an embedded statement

that here is an embedded modifier, it's descriptive of this stuff,

or rather actually it's descriptive of this stuff, interactions.

What you want to do is you want to not lose track of the subject and predicate of the sentence.

The first time you read it, just don't read this stuff.

So what we have is under such conditions, emotional bonds created in pre-musical

mother-infant interactions would have conferred considerable evolutionary advantage.

Okay, so what about these interactions?

Well, these interactions are behavior whose neurological basis essentially constitutes

the capacity to make and enjoy music.

Okay, it's because of the emotional bonds that we get considerable evolutionary advantage.

And these emotional bonds are formed on the basis of behavior whose neurological basis

essentially constitutes the capacity to make and enjoy music.

So these emotional bonds are attributable to music.

So, you know, to be honest, I'm just, I'm a little disappointed in this third paragraph

because I was hoping to get a more, a better explanation of this hypothesis.

Because if you're, all you're going to say is just it's because of the emotional bond.

We already got that in the first paragraph.

It's because it creates emotional bonds between mother and child.

That's evolutionary advantage.

And here it just seems like they're just saying it again.

But anyway, there are other details.

For example, we now know the author believes that there's this sort of physical evolution

of humans that happened simultaneously, contemporaneously with this brain evolution.

And at this point, we're ready to look at the questions.

So let's do that.

Question 12 now asks us what the author's most likely agree to

which one of the following questions. So 11 was what the author's disagree on.

12 is what do they agree on. So this one,

I don't know, I have, I suppose, less of a sense of being able

to anticipate, because this agreement seemed pretty obvious.

I was, you know, keeping track of that as we were reading.

But the agreement, I don't know, maybe they could agree on a lot of

stuff. Specifically, they're asking about musical capacity.

some I don't know.

Passage A doesn't talk about early infancy, whether babies have some early form of,

you know, music. So it's just like with question 11,

if one author doesn't take a position on it,

then there's no way you can disagree with him, nor can you agree with

him. So A is gone. B says does it,

See, like, there's just questions that B is very concerned with answering A does

not answer these questions. C says,

increase in brain size, and yeah, there you go.

Right, this, this is said, um, see right, right here,

involve brain size, and then, uh, passage B definitely talks about that to somewhere,

right here, this whole thing about the brain size and stuff. So I think

their answer would be both yes, for,

for both authors, would be yes for, uh, this question.

That's, that's not, nobody said that. Even for A,

I know you might be thinking A might say agree with this,

but, or say yes, but, uh, that's,

we don't, we can't say that. The reason is because all A's says is

that music and language are processed in the same part of the neurological system.

I don't know if it's because, right?

I don't know this, that system developed as a result of music.

Maybe music developed as a result of the system being there.

Who knows, right? So you can't, you can't answer that. He says,

And neither author answers that. Why are some people awesome?

Uh, piano players and some people, you know,

terrible singers or whatever, we don't know.