QUESTION TEXT: Traditional “talk” therapy, in which a patient…
QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption
CONCLUSION: Drugs will eventually work just as well as talk therapy.
REASONING: Talk therapy produces chemical changes in the brain. These changes seem to happen alongside improvements in patients’ behavior. Drugs can be used to produce chemical changes in the brain.
ANALYSIS: This passage doesn’t tell us much about talk therapy. Talk therapy might have other effects, apart from producing chemical changes.
___________
- Far too broad. We only care about chemical changes that result from talk therapy or drug use designed to treat psychological disorder.
- CORRECT. If talk therapy has other effects apart from chemical change, then drugs probably couldn’t match those effects.
- This would strengthen the argument by setting a low hurdle for drugs to be considered effective. But this assumption isn’t necessary. Maybe drugs can match talk therapy even if talk therapy is very effective at treating psychological disorder.
- What a weird answer. Who cares if psychology and neuroscience become the same? The stimulus was pretty specific, dealing only with whether drugs could be as effective as talk therapy.
- The stimulus didn’t make any claims about the relative costs of the two methods, so this is irrelevant.
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LTJ says
How exactly do we know that drugss can be used to produce chemical changes in the brain? Maybe the drugs don’t produce chemical changes in the brain. Although Blake has it in the reasoning, I don’t see it in the stimulus. Or is that something that’s assumed to be common sense? (Drugs producing chemical changes in the brain.