Q22 - Psychiatrist: In treating first-year students

[AllyMaeBell]

22. (C)
Question Type: Strengthen

First, find the argument core. Premise: Those first year-students at this university who report high levels of spending on recreation score about the same on standard anxiety and depression screenings as those who report the lowest levels of spending on recreation. Conclusion: Those with high levels of spending could reduce spending on recreation without increasing anxiety or depression.

Second, find the assumptions. What doesn’t match up between the premise and conclusion? Well, the premise talks about reducing spending, but the premises just talk about spending at one level or the other. What if the process of changing your spending on recreation causes anxiety or depression? Also, the argument assumes that everyone has the same relationship between anxiety/depression and recreational spending. But what if those with high levels of spending on recreation use that recreation to decrease their anxiety of depression? Third, the psychiatrist links first-year students at this university to first-year students in general. What if first year students at this university are not representative?

Third, examine the answer choices. This is a "strengthen EXCEPT" question, so we will rule out four answer choices that strengthen the argument, and choose the one that either weakens the argument or is irrelevant.

(A) This corroborates the psychiatrist’s findings and helps bridge the game between first year students at this university and first year students in general. Strengthens, so eliminate it.
(B) This strengthens the argument by suggesting that if students lowered their spending to moderate levels, they not only wouldn’t increase anxiety or depression, they might actually decrease it.
(C) Adults between the ages of 40 and 60? This doesn’t seem particularly relevant to a conclusion about first-year students. Even if it were, the rest of the statement seems to weaken the conclusion, since we’re looking for evidence that high levels of spending are NOT relevant to decreased anxiety or depression. This is our answer choice.
(D) This strengthens the argument by increasing the validity of the screening instruments.
(E) This strengthens the conclusion by giving anecdotal evidence of situations in which the conclusion has actually been true.

[mornincounselor]

Interesting question, I initially chose (A) on this one.

The prompt offers anecdotal evidence that those first-year students who spend the highest amounts on recreation and those who spend the lowest amounts on recreation both have a similair level of anxiety and depression (as reported, and evaluted by "standard screening instruments.")

It then concludes from this data that students with high levels of spending could decreases their spending without increasing their anixiety or depression.

(A) This restates the evidence presented in the prompt and extends it to other universities, but it still doesn't bridge the gap between those who spend the highest and those who spend high amounts.

(B) This also doesn't bridge the gap but it does strenghen the argument--if this were true, then if those at the high levels fell to medium levels and be less depressed overall.

(C) I think the 40-60 year olds bit is a red herring. Whose to say many first-year students at the univeristy are not in this age group? Despite this, on further relfection I see how this weakens (or at the least does not strenghten) the argument.

(D) Obviously strengthens.

(E) If some of the students have went from very high to very low it does, somewhat, strengthen the argument.

So I suppose this might be one of the questions where I wrongly eliminated the correct choice and then forced myself into finding fault with a correct choice. Does the gap in the argument between using evidence of the extremes to support a conclusion about all those who register "highly" in the experiment not matter?

Or is that a fault with the argument, but since it is our job simply to strenghten the argument, and not to make it perfect, we can still strengthen the argument in other ways without rectfying that particular fault of the argument?

Thanks.

[rachellewrx]

But doesn't B also suggest that people with moderate spending are less depressed than people with LOWEST spending? So, following B's logic , if people with moderate spending reduce their spending to the lowest level, wouldn't their depression increase ? Doesn't this contradict with the conclusion in the argument? Or is the stimulus equaling HIGHEST level with HIGH level in its conclusion?

It seems that B is very inconsistent with the argument.

[maryadkins]

I also paused on (B), so I get your confusion.

What I had to do was go back to the conclusion to see what it was actually claiming. It claims that the students with the HIGH LEVELS could reduce their anxiety or depression. It's not about the students with the lowest levels, at all. So we don't worry about them when we're looking to strengthen the conclusion. For this reason (B) DOES strengthen in how it bears on the HIGH level students, the only group we're concerned about.

[tuesdayninja]

I got this one right when I took it timed, but now looking back at A I'm not sure that it strengthens the argument? The argument says first year students at the university that spend the highest have the same level of anxiety/depression as those that spend the lowest and concludes that the first year students that spend high amounts can reduce spending without increasing anxiety/depression. How does showing that this behavior exists among first year students at OTHER universities strengthen the argument that first year students at THE university can reduce their spending?

I've interpreted the conclusion to refer to the first year students from the university in the study because the argument says 'the first-year students' and the premise preceding the conclusion qualifies first-year students with 'at this university'. If the conclusion had said 'first-year students in general' then I think A would strengthen the conclusion. But if the conclusion is referring to the first year students at the university in the study, answer A seems out of scope and so doesn't strengthen. Any thoughts?

[GolddiggerF208]

I still have difficulty with (B).

The levels of spending time on recreation: highest - moderate - lowest.
The levels of anxiety and depression: relatively high - relatively low - relatively high.

(B) indicates the trend that the level of anxiety or depression, correlated with the time spent from the highest to moderate level, goes down, which strengthens the stimulus.

How about one keeps spending less time on recreation, ie, from moderate to lowest level? The students are likely to be more anxious and depressed. Does this meet the stimulus? So I see (B) shows the inherent inconsistency of the conclusion - if you begin with a high level of time spent on recreation and if you keep spending less and less time, to some point, you will experience the increased anxiety or depression.

Even so, (C) is absolutely a better choice.