LSAT 152 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q6

LR Question 6 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Researchers studying athletes found that those who played…

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

FACTS:

1. Athletes who play for love of their sport had better vision than those who just wanted to win a trophy or competition.
2. This is because when you concentrate on the activity itself, your vision can become sharper.

ANALYSIS: It sounds like people trying to win a trophy are concentrated on the trophy and not the game, so they don’t have the focussed attention necessary to sharpen their vision for the game itself.

Note that “sharp vision” is a broad term. This doesn’t necessarily mean the athletes have better vision in terms of a glasses prescription. It could instead mean that these athletes have sharper vision for specific details of their game, e.g. in hockey they may be more focussed on a quick moving puck, and see it a split second faster than their rivals.

___________

1. This doesn’t follow. You may compete mostly for love of the game, but yet want a trophy as well. (Winning trophies could be part of your love of the game).
2. This is very tempting, but it gets one word wrong. It should have said “lack the concentration necessary for sharp vision….”. This answer says “adequate” vision. Sharp and adequate are very different things. Adequate is a low standard.
3. CORRECT. This is quite strongly implied by the information above. The stimulus says sharp vision requires concentration, and athletes playing for love of the sport had better vision. So, this suggests they may have been more concentrated.
4. This is ridiculous. This would mean that an athlete can’t watch the ball and other players. Sports players obviously can focus on more than one thing at once, as many things happen simultaneously in sports.
5. This is very tempting, but the stimulus actually never talked about “better performance”. Instead, it only said that focussing your attention allows “sharper vision”. It’s possible that athletes who want to win trophies perform better even if their vision is less sharp.

Recap: The question begins with “Researchers studying athletes found that those who played”. It is a Most Strongly Supported question. Learn more about LSAT MSS questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.