Logical reasoning PrepTest 127 · Section 1 · Question 18

Question prompt

Nutritionist: Because humans have Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Argument Structure Questions

Stimulus Summary

Nutritionist: We haven’t evolved much since agriculture, so we’re still set up to eat wild foods. Eating other diets often makes people sick. So the more we eat wild foods, the healthier we are.

Answer Anticipation

The argument starts with a clear premise indicator word - “Because.” That word tells us not only that we’re about to get a premise, but that it’s going to build directly into the conclusion it supports. That’s reinforced by the following clause starting with “it is clear that” which introduces a conclusion. That statement is also the statement in question, so it’s either the main point or an intermediate conclusion.
After this opening clause, we get a list of foods that we can largely ignore (it’s essentially just providing a definition of wild foods). After this, it talks about the effect of straying from the diet - that’s a premise, as it establishes something as fact without offering support for it. That builds to another conclusion (“Thus…”). We’ll need to look at this conclusion and the earlier one to see which supports the other.
So what “flow” makes more sense? Does it make sense to say that humans are biologically adapted to a wild food diet, so the more we eat that diet, the healthier we’ll be? Yeah, that sounds like a decent enough argument. What about the reverse - The more we eat a wild food diet, the healthier we’ll be, so we must be biologically adapted to a wild food diet? That’s not the worst argument we’ve ever heard, but it certainly makes less sense than the first potential argument since it concludes just one of many explanations for the phenomenon without reason to select it over others.
Thus the statement in question is an intermediate conclusion, and we should look for that answer.

Answer choices

  1. A
    It is a conclusion Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    It is a conclusion, but the opening clause is support for it, and the noted support from this answer is actually an independent premise that directly supports the main point, not this intermediate conclusion.
  2. B
    It is a premise Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The structure of the first sentence along with the introduction to the statement in question (“it is clear that”) establishes it as a conclusion of some sort, and we determined that it’s an intermediate conclusion. While an intermediate conclusion can be correctly characterized as a premise, it can’t be characterized as a premise “for which no justification is provided” - it’s a conclusion because there is some support for it.
  3. C
    It is a phenomenon Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    This answer is essentially the reverse of how the argument works. The statement in question is an explanation of the main point, not the other way around. (Why are we healthier when we stick to a diet of wild foods? Because we’re biologically adapted to it.)
  4. D
    It is an intermediate Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem
    This answer perfectly describes the role of the statement in question. It’s an intermediate conclusion supported by the opening clause/premise, and with the other premise supports the main point.
  5. E
    It is a premise Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    While an intermediate conclusion can be correctly described as a premise, this answer gets the first statement reversed. The lack of evolution since agriculture is used to support the statement in question, not the other way around.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 7%
  2. B 5%
  3. C 3%
  4. D Credited 79%
  5. E 6%

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