LSAT 79, Logical Reasoning I, Q8, LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: While studying a large colony of macaque…

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

FACTS: 

1. Baby macaques imitated scientists smacking their lips, and sticking out their tongues.
2. The baby macaques did not imitate the scientists when the scientists opened and closed their mouths, or when the scientists made hand gestures.
3. Adult macaques smack lips and stick out tongues with babies. They do not open/close their mouths or make hand gestures with babies.

ANALYSIS: It sounds like the babies are only imitating those behaviors which an adult macaque would also do.

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1. This isn’t supported: the babies didn’t mimic every behavior!
2. Tempting, but this isn’t well supported. The babies also didn’t imitate mouth opening and closing, despite being able to mimic two other mouth related behaviors.
   It’s likely a single explanation explain both cases of failure to mimic.
3. We don’t know why adult macaques use these behaviors with infants. We just know that they do use them.
4. This is possible, but we have no evidence for it. It’s also possible that babies recognize the scientists aren’t macaques, but enjoy mimicking them anyway.
5. CORRECT. This best fits the facts we have. It explains why the babies mimic the gestures used by adult macaques, but not other gestures.

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