Logical reasoning PrepTest 146 · Section 1 · Question 23

Incorrect. This answer moves from those who competed in the marathon to those who didn't, and it splits the former between successes and failures. That's too many groups, so it's not parallel.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Parallel Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Successful spies Ð Not caught and don't reveal their secrets
Failed spies Ð Caught and reveal their secrets
Therefore, we learn more about what makes a spy a failure than a success

Answer Anticipation:
There's some conditional logic in the stimulus, but it's unclear how to diagram some of the statements (that first clause, for instance), and it's unclear that there would be chains to build.
Instead, let's focus on the relationships and how the argument proceeds. The argument looks at spies, and what makes them a success or failure. From there, it highlights that one of those two—failures—we learn more about because they're caught and thus reveal their secrets; successful spies aren't caught and don't reveal their secrets.

So abstracting away from the content here, it appears we talk about a specific group (spies) and two binary "states" of that group (success; failure). There are implications of both, and because of those features, more is known about one of them (the failures). Let's find an answer that matches with that.

Answer Explanation:
This answer brings up a group—motives—and splits it in two—unconscious and conscious motives. Because of characteristics of these, the argument concludes that more will be known about one (conscious motives) than the other. This argument follows the same general form as the stimulus, so it's correct, but if you deferred on this answer and weren't willing to select it on the first pass, that's fine, as well!

Key Takeaway:
If you're struggling with some weird conditional logic in a stimulus, abandon ship. Diagrams are a tool to help us understand an argument, and if it's not helping, then it's the wrong tool. Here, there were conditional relationships, but it was likely easier to understand the argument without trying to formalize it.

Incorrect. This argument is about the possibility of reaching a given conclusion, not knowledge of only one of two subsets of a larger group.

Incorrect. This doesn't break teachers into two groups, so it doesn't match the stimulus.

Incorrect. This answer does discuss two situations where more can be known about one, but it doesn't have the group that's split in two, and the scenario where less can be known is concluded as being "impossible" to discern, which is stronger than the "very little" known about successful spies in the stimulus.