PT10.S4.Q14 - in a learning experiment

beezmoof

I really dislike this flaw q and I've historically had trouble with it so I'd love some feedback to see if my understanding of the stimulus and the AC is finally correct. Also there's no video explanation for this one.

Stimulus:
In an experiment, researchers ran rats through a maze, some of which were missing one of their five senses--sight, taste, hearing, etc. Regardless of their specific missing characteristic, ALL rats finished the maze in the same amount of time.
Researchers found out that kinesthesia (sensation of body movement) could also be relevant to finishing a maze, in the same way sight, taste and hearing is helpful.
Off of this info, the researcher concludes: kinesthesia is sufficient for maze running.

I had a really hard time understanding the stimulus the first few times I saw this question especially w the double negative sentence, and more so with the unstated idea in the conclusion that the researchers were presuming kinesthesia ALONE is sufficient for maze running. From the language in the conclusion, I didn't see the researchers ruling out the possibility that the other senses in which the rats were not deficient (aka the blind rat using his/her sense of smell) could've helped as well in finishing the maze. So would love to see how people came to this flaw on their own or how I should've better identified it when attempting to prephase.

I got to choice B by process of elimination. Ruled out A because it was descriptively inaccurate with "small deficiencies in proficiency." Ruled out C, D, E, because of the phrase "it can be determined from the data." None of those things can be determined from the data for sure.

Thanks!!

BinghamtonDave

So a couple of things here we should keep in mind:
-I think we are given a problem in a familiar framework:
we have a phenomena and then we have a hypothesis. The argument has chosen to describe the phenomena a certain way to the exclusion of other alternative hypothesis. This is the central weakness in these argument types.

Phenomena:
Rats individually missing the senses of sight, hearing and smell (as well as rats not missing any senses) all completed the maze around the same amount of time.

Hypothesis used by the argument to describe that phenomena:
kinesthesia is sufficient to get the rats through the maze.

Now taking a step back, how can we support that particular conclusion/hypothesis? What kind of experiment could lead us to that conclusion?

It would be difficult to imagine but what we would have to do is deprive the rats of every other sense and then the rats would never have to fail: having the kinesthesia would be sufficient for maze learning. That would be a really bizarre experiment to hold and it is certainly not the one conducted in the problem. Note here I'm not even sure if this would prove that kinesthesia is sufficient for maze learning.

But this argument's conclusion (hypothesis) gets weirder: be are told that the rats' other senses (not sight, hearing or smell) have been shown to be irrelevant to maze learning: leaving only kinesthesia as not shown to be irrelevant to maze learning. Irrelevant here I believe means neither sufficient nor necessary for the task at hand. We should pause here and note that just because something has not been shown to be irrelevant to a specific task does not imply that it is indeed in reality not irrelevant.

So there is a ton wrong with this argument.

Now, what the descriptive weakening answer choice does here is point out one of the assumptions: it says, the hypothesis is really odd: your study never deprived the rat of all of its senses: maybe kinesthesia was necessarily working with an alternating one of sight, hearing, smell when the rats figured out the maze. This would be an alternative hypothesis that accounts for one of the weaknesses in the phenomena observed.

I hope the following tip makes sense because it is a piece of advice I am trying to implement into my approach. You had really good prediction for what you deduced the weakness/gap/flaw in this argument was. The LSAT might give us something not as concise as we might predict

.> @beezmoof said:

I didn't see the researchers ruling out the possibility that the other senses in which the rats were not deficient (aka the blind rat using his/her sense of smell) could've helped as well in finishing the maze.

beezmoof

Okay I think some time away from this question and coming back to this response helped.

Here's what I've gleaned. The conclusion is claiming that kinesthesia ALONE (meaning with no other senses accompanying it) is sufficient to run a maze. So if kinesthesia --> then can complete a maze. Its support for jumping to such a big claim? That of all the senses, kinesthesia hasn't shown to be irrelevant for maze learning.

But something not being irrelevant doesn't necessarily alone make it sufficient. It could just mean that that thing merely plays a role in achieving something, perhaps with the help of something else, which is exactly the alternate hypothesis you're talking about. So kinesthesia may not be irrelevant to completing a maze, but it doesn't make it sufficient to completing a maze; it could just be necessary along w something else. Perhaps kinesthesia + smelling is necessary for maze learning, turning the conditional chain above into this instead: if can complete a maze --> kinesthesia + smelling.

I think what went wrong here was this phrase in the stimulus for me: "of the sights other than sight, smelling, hearing..." I ignored the "other than" and merely focused on sight, smelling, hearing, so I thought ALL the other sights were irrelevant so I couldn't really see a flaw.

@BinghamtonDave I hope I've finally gotten it right with your help!!!

RGBeetobe

@beezmoof I think you hit the nail on the head with the "Of the sights other than..." This question is confusing because of this sentence's formulation, and also because of the double negative you mentioned earlier ("only kinesthesia had NOT previously been shown to be IRRELEVANT"). In plain English, this means that touch and taste HAVE been shown to be irrelevant, but kinesthesia hasn't. The researcher concludes that since kinesthesia MIGHT be relevant, it MUST be sufficient. Whoa! That's a big logical jump that isn't supported by the information given in the study. The researcher assumes that rats deprived of one sense or that have no sensory deficiencies, if they do have kinesthesia, are able to complete the task at the same time BECAUSE of the kinesthesia. But maybe they are using another sense instead, as you mentioned. Maybe there is a sixth sense that rat's possess- an inner eye. Maybe they use the Force. Who knows? B clearly accounts for this possibility.

I think that getting to "B" by process of elimination could be a good approach for this question (that's how I got it initially) since the time that it takes to fully understand the stimulus and predict the right answer may be too long under timed conditions.

Hope this helps.

beezmoof

@RGBeetobe the confirmation in thinking is helpful to hear! Nice to crush a question finally after staring at it for so long.