Negation test for certain RC Questions?

youbbyun

hey all,

has anyone had experiences/thoughts on applying the negation test to certain RC questions?

So, I feel that for certain "infer" Q's, they're kind of like Must be True questions.

Where there is 1 Must be true AC, and 4 Can be False wrong answer choices.

Thus, for the wrong answer choices, if you negate it, it can be consistent with the passage and true.

On the other hand, for right answer choices, if you negate it, it clearly contradicts the passage.

For example: pretend the passage is just one sentence: The dog is brown.

What can we infer from this passage?

A) The dog is brown
The dog can fly
C) Unicorns are blue
D) Dogs are ugly

For Answer choice A, if we negate it (the dog is NOT brown), that directly contradicts the passage, and is thus the right answer choice.

For the other 3 answer choices, they're unsupported, so even if we negate it, it can still be true.

Anyway, does anyone have any feedback/thoughts about this analysis?

youbbyun

any thoughts on this?

Bamboosprout

Well, you aren't wrong. I would just say that I think if you can recall that negating an answer choice is a contradiction, then you can probably just recall that the original answer is true. I suppose if you have two answer choices that you feel are both possible, then you can try this, yeah.
This technique makes much more sense for NA and MBT questions in LR because the argument is very clear, and it's easy to test whether the argument becomes invalid after negating an answer choice, but I can't say the same for an RC passage. I find it slightly more difficult to test whether the something becomes invalid for an RC passage because of its complexity and length, but if it works for you, then do it, or save it in the back pocket for when you're doing your review and still can't decide on an answer.
The technique can definitely work. I just don't know how effective and efficient it is for the average LSAT taker.