Q4 - Scientist: In testing whether a baby's babbling

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Procedure

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: Babbling turns out to be linguistic.

Evidence: Past studies showed nonlinguistic stuff comes out of the left side of mouth. New study saw babbling babies open right sides wider.

Any prephrase?
Prephrasing these questions involves characterizing the evidence or logical reasoning path (presented an analogy? ruled out competing alternative? cited an example? etc.) Here, I would probalby anticipate something like "uses the combined findings of current and past studies". Although, it's also true to say we were choosing between two alternatives: linguistic vs. nonlinguistic. Ultimately, anything that accurately matches is correct.

Correct answer:
E

Answer choice analysis:
A) There was no argument for any conclusion but the author's.

B) Is there a generally accepted principle? Does the author go after it? The closest thing to a generally accepted principle might be "people have wider left mouth during nonlinguistic stuff". But the author uses that as a premise. She definitely doesn't try to undermine or question its adequacy.

C) It rasies the question of whether babbling is linguistic or not, but it doesn't describe a potential test. It describes two actual studies.

D) Everything in this argument went in the same direction, so the part about "counters assertions that the explanation is unlikely to be correct" has no match.

E) This was hard to match at first, but the two possible interpretations of a phenomenon refers to the first sentence: "Baby babbling: linguistic task or random sounds?" The evidence was in support of linguistic and opposed to nonlinguistic.

Takeaway/Pattern: Always stay flexible with Describe questions, since there are a lot of different, valid ways to express what happened. Make sure that for any answer you're considering, you can find text to match up with every part of the answer choice.

#officialexplanation

[sanchez.zoilac]

I was torn between B and E, and chose B because I considered an established finding to be a generally accepted principle. The recent study seemed to offer a new principle.

I did not compare B and E to each other, but tried to apply the elements of the answer choices to the passage.

I appreciate guidance with interpreting the abstract language.

[sanchez.zoilac]

Thank you! This explanation is very helpful. I have a shift in how I approach descriptive questions now.

[reighbrian]

I'm a little confused as to how the argument provides evidence "in support" of the fact that babbling is linguistic?

I get that nonlinguistic vocalizations use the left, so the fact that baby babbling uses the right is evidence against that, but where is the evidence that says it is linguistic? For all we know, it could be neither, no?

[ohthatpatrick]

Binary ideas are exhaustive, meaning you have to be one or the other.

You're either linguistic or nonlinguistic.

It's still possible to carve up those categories into other distinctions, but everything in the logical universe is either A or not-A.