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adriannajguarino649

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PrepTests ·

PT123.S3.Q17

adriannajguarino649

Monday, Dec 30 2024

The first few times I did this one, I was really hung up because I was caught on the wrong part of the argument.

I got overly eager with the causal reasoning and "healthy back" and thought it was getting at the gap in reasoning that balanced muscle development does not mean healthy back.

However, after diagramming the argument I see why this is incorrect. Firstly, the argument never tries to say that balanced muscle development is sufficient (guarantees) a healthy back, just that it is necessary to have a healthy back. Secondly, the idea of "healthy back" appears in both the premises and the conclusion, so its not a new concept thrown in unsupported to the conclusion.

The second hurdle for me was recognizing that balanced muscle development does not necessarily mean exercising both sides equally. I feel like that assumption was so subconscious its even hard now to see that they're not the same (especially because "equally" is said in the premise), but if you think about it with absolutely no outside knowledge, they could be different things, and the premises do not say that they are the same. So then you need to find an assumption that links those two together in the answer:

B) unequal exercise --> unequal development -- this is the negated form of what we'd want (another hurdle yay!), but it is necessary. If this was NOT true (i.e., it could be the case that unequal exercise could lead to balanced muscle development), then the premise "balanced muscle development is needed to maintain a healthy back" cannot lend any support to the conclusion "it is important to exercise muscles on opposite sides of the spine equally"

PrepTests ·

PT123.S3.Q13

adriannajguarino649

Monday, Dec 30 2024

Premise 1: cognitive therapy focuses on changing conscious beliefs

Premise 2: only conscious beliefs are under the patient's direct control

Conclusion: Therefore, cognitive therapy is likely to be more effective at helping patients overcome psych, problems than ones that focus on unconscious beliefs.

Before looking at the questions, I noticed that the idea of one treatment being more "effective" than the others is introduced in the conclusion, but "effectiveness" is not discussed anywhere in the premises, so I mentally flagged that as a gap in the argument.

Then once I got to the questions, I was between B and D.

I agree with Kevin's video that the key word between the two is "helps" -- in this sense, its not that the unconscious cog. therapy is also FOCUSING on conscious thoughts, but that it could be some unintentional byproduct that your conscious thoughts & beliefs improve as you're targeting the unconscious ones (this tripped me up the first time I read it). We don't actually know if this exception to the rule (the rule that all unconscious-focused cog therapies cannot be effective) is triggered by the unconscious therapies.

Also, even if the exception WAS triggered (i.e., targeting unconscious actually does help the conscious, thus making it effective), that would not strengthen the therapist's argument, because she is trying to say that cognitive therapy is better than unconscious ones. So I think this might be a way that you could rule D out -- granting it as true and then seeing what it means for the original argument.

Study Groups

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Thursday, Feb 06

adriannajguarino649

NYC Area Study Buddy?

Hi! Looking for potential morale buddies to stick together & keep each other motivated during this brutal process.

I'm 23F living in Manhattan working a full-time job and would love other people to make this process more fun. Thinking virtual stuff mostly but would also be cool to maybe grab coffee and meet live.

I have been studying around 4 months and am in the 165 range, hoping to take the test in June 2025-- hoping for people kind of in a similar stage both in terms of the test and life, but generally open!

Comment if interested! :)