Self-study
In a study of the relationship between aggression and television viewing in nursery school children, many interesting interactions among family styles, aggression, and television viewing were found. ████ ██████████ ████████ ██ ████ ████████████ ███ ███████████ ████████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██ ███████ ██ ████████ ██████████ ███████████████ ████████████ ████████████ ████████ █████ ████████ ███ ███ █████ ████ ███████████ ███ ████ ██████████ ████████ ████ ███████ ███ ███████ █████ █████ ██ ██ ██████████ ██████████████ ████ █████ ████████ ██████ ███████ ██ ██████████ ████████
Stimulus Summary: Study Results
The stimulus describes some correlations that this study has found between family style, aggression, and television viewing. We're told that high aggression occurred both in children with high levels of television viewing and with low levels, and that this was linked to parental lifestyle. As an example, we're told that children with low levels of television viewing whose parents were high-achieving, competitive, and middle-class tended to be more aggressive than children with higher levels of television viewing whose parents had an "organized, child-centered" lifestyle.
Analysis: Most Strongly Supported
Based on the sentence about how the aggression in both high-viewing and low-viewing children "seemed to be related to parental lifestyle," we can tentatively guess that a conclusion supported by this stimulus might say something about parental influence being a significant factor on aggression in children, or something like that — though note that even there, we don't know what the respective influence of parental influence versus television viewing is. For a stimulus like this, which is primarily descriptive and doesn't contain any conditional (or even explicitly causal) logic that we can draw inferences from, it makes the most sense to go straight to the answer choices and proceed by elimination.
12.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ ████ █████████ ██ ███ ████████
a
Low levels of ██████████ ███████ █████ ████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ ██████████ █████ █████████
Incorrect. The stimulus never suggests that low levels of television as an isolated factor, independent of parental influence, cause high levels of aggression in children.
b
The level of ██████████ ██ █ █████ ██████ ██ █████████ ████ ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████ ██████
Correct. (B) is strongly supported by the sentence we mentioned in our analysis: "High aggression occurred in both high-viewing and low-viewing children and this seemed to be related to parental lifestyle." This sentence and the example following it strongly suggest that knowing only how much television a child watches wouldn't let us predict that child's level of aggression. There is another relevant factor, parental lifestyle, that we need to know about.
c
If high-achieving, competitive ███████ ████ ████ ███████████████ █████ ████████ █████ ██ ████ ███████████
Incorrect. This answer choice assumes that these parents' failure to be child-centered alone — as opposed, say, to their other personality traits, or lifestyle factors linked to income, education, etc. — is what makes their children more aggressive. But the stimulus never says that. So (C) isn't supported.
d
High levels of ██████████ ███████ ███ ███████ ████ ██████ ██ ██████████ █████ ████████ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ███ ███ ███████████████
Incorrect. The stimulus doesn't give us enough information to conclude that high levels of television viewing only explain high levels of aggression among children when their parents aren't child-centered. For all we know, high levels of television viewing could still predict high levels of aggression among children whose parents are child-centered, even if those children may not be as aggressive overall as the children of less child-centered parents. So (D) isn't supported.
e
Parental lifestyle is ████ █████████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████ ██ ███████████ ███ ██████████████ ██ █████████
Incorrect. While the stimulus doesn't say that parental lifestyle is more important than television viewing in determining children's aggressiveness, it certainly suggests that television viewing alone doesn't determine children's aggressiveness — parental lifestyle must also be considered. So we don't have any basis to assign relative importance to these two factors, let alone claim that parental influence is less important than television viewing.