PT91.S2.Q22 Some researchers suggest that people tend to gesture less

leoxnardx

If this is not the hardest question on the set, I don't know which is. I had a great time trying to understand this question and why C is correct and spent an hour just scratching my head trying to figure it out. Would still love to see what everyone thinks about this question. But so far I don't see that many asking about this question so here is my take on it.

Background: Some researchers claim that people gesture less when expressing abstract instead of physical ideas
Premise: Some people perceive words in different ways: for a word that has both abstract and physical understanding, people can perceive it as either abstract or physical

Conclusion: The argument that the researchers' claim is not universal is not sufficient reason to reject it.

WTF. What are the connections between the premise and the conclusion? It seems to me that the premise is trying to say that the researchers' claim MIGHT WELL BE universal.

The argument implies that the critics would challenge the researchers' claim by doubting its univsersality. It might be something like this: the word "comprehension" represents an abstract concept, but some people apparently gesture and make a grabbing movement when they say it. This is a disproving evidence that would show that this claim is not universal, therefore it can be rejected.

Author counters by saying: hey, "comprehension" doesn't have to mean the abstract concept of understanding. It can definitely mean "catching" or "grasping." Not so fast critics, the claim of the researchers can still be universal: people just understand a word differently, and their actions regarding gesturing when expressing different words or concepts are still in accordance with what the researchers have claimed. Just because someone does gesture when expressing a word that has an abstract definition does not mean that person are thinking of the abstract definition of that word. He or she might well be expressing the physical definition instead of the abstract one. In this line of reasoning, the researchers' claim still stand and still might be universal.

AC C matches this pretty well. The author is trying to use a psychological fact (people perceive words in different definition) to reconcile a general claim (researchers' 'people gesture less with abstract concepts'") with apparently disconfirming evidence (people do NOT always gesture less when expressing abstract concepts). I find this line of reasoning the most applicable to the right answer to this question. I might be dead wrong with this, and I would love to see what others have to say about this.