LSAT 116 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q10

LR Question 10 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: When students receive negative criticism generated by computer…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Students will learn better from human generated criticism [because they are more likely to be capable of accepting it].

ANALYSIS: The argument hasn’t given us any link showing that if students accept criticism, they will learn from it. They imply it exists. Implied links are often the correct answers on necessary assumption questions.

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1. CORRECT. Negating this assumption wrecks the argument. When negated, this read, “Students are at least as likely to learn from criticism they do not accept as from criticism which they do accept.” If so, they can just as easily learn from negative computer criticism.
2. Compassion is not mentioned in the stimulus.
3. So? We don’t know why students react differently to negative criticism from computers. Also, a logical negation can be very slight. The logical opposite of always is “not always,” which could be as high as 99.9%.
4. Not a necessary assumption. Even if computers produced the same rate of negative criticism, students would still react worse to it.
5. Definitely not necessary to the argument. They could produce more negative criticism, and the argument would be stronger.

Recap: The question begins with “When students receive negative criticism generated by computer”. It is a Necessary Assumption question. Learn more about LSAT Necessary questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.