Logical reasoning PrepTest 102 · Section 2 · Question 8

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen (Principle (Strengthen) or Must Be True)

Stimulus Summary:
A toddler may bite someone they think is stopping them from getting a toy, so it's not malicious.

Answer Anticipation:
Before we get into the stimulus or answers, let's start with the question stem. There, we're told that a situation is described above, and the answer will be a generalization that the situation conforms to. You'll note that we categorized this in three ways, and we think that approaching it from any of them could yield the correct answer. A principle is a generalization, so if you viewed this as a principle question, there's nothing wrong with that. Also, the correct answer and the stimulus will line up. Whether you view that as the stimulus supporting the answer (as many Must Be True answers are weak generalizations from a situation in the stimulus), or the answer supporting the stimulus (providing some support to the judgment made), you'd end up with the same answer.

With that out of the way, let's head to the stimulus. There, this situation does seem to conform to a Strengthen (Principle)-style question, as a judgment is made (toddlers aren't acting maliciously when they bite people) based on a situation. That situation? They want a toy, and the person is preventing them from having it. It's not about being mad at the person—it's about getting a toy they want.

Note that we could view that situation as the toddler maliciously biting someone who is preventing them from getting a toy they want. But that would be pointing out a flaw in the logic here, and we're not tasked with that—we're tasked with generalizing from this situation (which makes this more of a Must Be True question).

Let's find an answer that reflects the dynamic that the author argues for—toddlers are biting people not out of malice, but to get something they want.

Answer Explanation:
This answer is a weak generalization from the stimulus. A toddler wants a toy, and someone is preventing them from getting it. The toddler bites the person not out of malice but to get the toy. That's problem solving (albeit bad problem solving), so this answer is a generalization that the stimulus conforms to and is thus correct.

Key Takeaway:
When a question stem isn't clearly in one question type or another, define the task and relate it to other question types that it's similar to. From there, head into the stimulus and use what you know about the associated question types to help you work through it. Here, the question arguably stood between a Must Be True and a Strengthen (Principle) question, and thinking about the elements of both helped us get through this.

Incorrect. First, this answer is about biting adults—the stimulus was about biting someone who was preventing them from getting a toy, which could be another toddler! Second, there's no indication in the stimulus that the toddler wants attention, just a toy.

Incorrect. There's no indication that the toddler is thinking about what is acceptable when they bit the person, or even that they understand the concept of acceptability!

Incorrect. For all we know, the toddler went through a risk/reward analysis and determined that biting someone was more likely to get them the toy than get an adult to take the toy away.

Incorrect. There's no indication whether the toddlers are successful in getting the toy after biting someone.