LR Question 10 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Researcher: Overhearing only one side of a cell-phone…
QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported
CONCLUSION: Hearing one half of a cellphone conversation is distracting.
REASONING:
- You have to guess what the person on the other side of the conversation is saying, and
- People on cellphones talk unusually loudly.
ANALYSIS: There’s not much to combine from the facts above. Instead, the question asks you to use common sense when evaluating the answers.
This is a bit unusual. Normally, people say that “on Most Strongly Supported questions, you take a deduction from the stimulus and find it in the answers”. Clearly, LSAC is departing from trend somewhat here.
This question instead is an argument, rather than the set of facts. LSAC basically expected you to deduce that the conclusion is the first sentence. This conclusion directly supports the right answer. If the first sentence was the only sentence, the credited answer would still be right.
….well, I said directly, but actually there are a couple assumptions you have to reasonably support to choose the right answer:
- Driving is a thing “people are doing”. [The first sentence says hearing part of a cellphone conversation distracts us from whatever we are doing]
- Being a distracted driver makes you a worse driver.
This second point isn’t in the stimulus, and you’re just supposed to bring it in as a reasonable outside assumption. If you do, the correct answer is easily supported.
___________
- This is close, but….if you’re on a cellphone, then you’re in the conversation. So this isn’t what the stimulus is talking about: you can hear the other side, and you don’t have to listen to yourself talking unusually loudly.
The stimulus was talking about listening to someone else have a phone call. - CORRECT. The first sentence directly supports this answer. Hearing half of a cellphone conversation distracts you from whatever you’re doing. Driving is a thing you’re doing, so hearing half of a conversation distracts you from driving. And, from common sense, if you pay less attention while driving, you are a worse driver.
- This doesn’t seem likely. Traditional phones were pretty similar to cellphones: you held them up to your ear and talked into them. So if you were listening to someone else on a phone call, you’d only hear one side of it. That’s at least half of the distraction from the stimulus. (If memory serves, people talk loudly on traditional phones too)
- “Inevitably” is far too strong. This answer would mean that no one, ever, could keep track of their thoughts the instant a phone call starts in a periphery. That’s extreme: some people can tune out distractions. Or maybe the distraction is minor enough that they can keep track of their thoughts through the difficulty.
- Like A, this talks about the wrong thing. The stimulus was about hearing someone else’s phone call. This answer is about your own phone call, and we have no info about that.
More Resources for Most Strongly Supported Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Most Strongly Supported questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers most strongly supported questions.
This question is extremely frustrating to me. Can you help me with where I am going wrong here?
I chose D. I thought that this was proven since listeners are guessing what the phone talker is saying. This requires thought. You cannot LITERALLY have two thoughts at once, right? So, this means that there IS at least a point of lost thought? Inevitably lost thought, I interpreted, meant there was at least some point of diverted thought.
But does this AC actually mean there is a permanent loss of thought? If it means that, can you help me understand why this means PERMANENT, and not just that it will definitely occur at some point? Am I even correct in thinking this latter point? You seem to think no, since you say a person can simply tune it out. How could this be so, if those in ear shot are guessing what the person on the other line is saying?
I did not choose B, although I was between it and D. I did not choose it because much of driving is unconscious. So it is completely possible a person can be listening to someone else’s phone conversation and drive just fine. I have experienced this personally! I have never felt like my driving was lesser because someone was talking on the phone while I drove. Maybe it was, but I did not experience any sort of observable decrease in my ability.
Where am I going wrong here? Do you have any tips to help me not miss questions like this in the future? Like you point out, this is an extremely unusual MSS, since we usually stick to the facts and don’t really rely on outside information.
Totally get the frustration. You’re not wrong that the stimulus says listeners try to guess what the unheard talker is saying, which requires some mental effort or thought. But D isn’t saying there’s a permanent loss of thought (like you suddenly stop thinking altogether). The real issue is with the world “inevitably”. That implies that anyone who overhears a one-sided phone conversation will always lose their train of thought. That’s a very strong absolute claim, and the stimulus doesn’t go that far.
As a general rule, be cautious with extreme language like “inevitably”. For an answer like that to be supported, the stimulus would also need to make a similarly strong claim, and it doesn’t. It just says overhearing diverts attention. But having your attention diverted isn’t the same as always losing your train of thought. Like Graeme mentioned, you can be momentarily distracted without totally derailing your thinking. There’s a big difference between something being common and it being definite and unavoidable.
That’s why B is better supported. If overhearing a one-sided conversation diverts attention from whatever someone is doing, and driving is obviously one of those activities, then it’s reasonable to infer that driving performance could suffer. It doesn’t say it must, only that it can, which is in line with the stimulus.
Even if you’ve never felt distracted while driving, that’s anecdotal. As Graeme noted, this question does require outside inferences, which is unusual for MSS. But in this case, it’s a far more reasonable inference that distraction could affect driving than that this is unlikely because you haven’t experienced it. After all, one of the biggest rules in driving safety is to avoid distractions and stay alert.
So yeah, a key takeaway here is to flag extreme language like “inevitably” “always” or “never”. They usually go beyond what the stimulus can support. And when making inferences, think in terms of what’s reasonable for the general population or for the average person, not just what seems true in your personal experience.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have other questions.