Reading comp PrepTest 150 · Section 4 · Question 8

Topic: Science

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Recent psychological research challenges common beliefs about our access to our thoughts
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Comparisons regarding our access to our thoughts, according to the common view:
    • We "know" our thoughts but have to "infer" the thoughts of others (first sentence)
    • Our knowledge of our thoughts is infallible, but our inferences of others' thoughts are based on their behavior and can be wrong (second sentence)
  • Comparisons between children's access to their thoughts, according to recent psychological research:
    • Children can correctly describe phenomena but misdescribe their thoughts on the same phenomena (third sentence)
    • Children are worse at identifying their thoughts than adults (fourth sentence)
  • Some psychologists' views:
    • We have to infer our thoughts, and we can make wrong inferences (fifth through last sentences)
  • Author's attitude: "challenged" (third sentence); "seems" (fourth sentence); "much less capable" (fourth sentence)

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Psychologists' view: We do not notice our inferences because we are "experts" on our thoughts
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Comparisons, according to psychologists:
    • Our belief that we "know" our thoughts is similar to becoming an expert in an area (first sentence)
    • As we become more "expert," we no longer notice that we are making inferences but instead feel like we have direct knowledge (third sentence)
  • Example of perception-changing expertise, according to psychologists:
    • Chess experts who claim they do not make inferences when assessing whether a position is weak or strong (fourth sentence)
  • Cause-and-effect relationship, according to psychologists:
    • We make inferences about our thoughts very quickly, which causes us not to notice that we are making inferences, which causes us to feel that we have direct knowledge about our thoughts, which causes us to believe we cannot be wrong about our thoughts (fifth through last sentences)

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Author's positive evaluation of psychologists' view
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • The author's views:
    • The psychologists almost make the facile claim that we make inferences about our thoughts based on our observations of our internal behavior (first sentence)
    • In reality, they actually say we make our inferences based on cognitive activity that is not thought (second sentence)
    • We make these inferences quickly, and no one can contradict these inferences, so we believe we have direct, infallible knowledge of these thoughts (third through last sentences)
  • Examples of cognitive activity that is not thought, according to the author and psychologists:
    • Fleeting sensations and emotions (second sentence)
  • Cause-and-effect relationships, according to the author:
    • We make inferences about our thoughts very often, which causes us to make quick and reliable inferences (third sentence)
    • No one can contradict our internal thoughts, which causes us to think that our thoughts are not inferences and infallible (fourth through last sentence)
  • Author's attitude: "perilously close" (first sentence); "in fact, their arguments do not commit them" (second sentence); "crucial in creating the illusion" (last sentence)

Main Point: Recent psychological research suggests that we may unknowingly infer our thoughts rather than "know" them directly.

Paragraph 1, Sentence 1 (P1, S1) - Common belief

P1, S5 - Psychologists' alternative explanation

P2, S5 - Support for psychologists' explanation

Phenomenon/Explanation - We think — or, perhaps, we infer from our fleeting cognitive activity — that this passage best fits the Phenomenon/Explanation Meta-Structure*. In such a passage, the author will describe an observable fact, behavior, or situation. In this case, it's a behavior — our thought process. Then, the author describes one or more explanations of that phenomenon. In this case, we get two explanations for our thought processes. First, we learn about the old view that we know our thoughts directly (P1, S1). Then, we learn about psychologists' recent argument that we unknowingly infer our thoughts. The discussion of this second explanation takes up the entire passage.

In a Phenomenon/Explanation passage, the main point is generally the explanation the author agrees with. The author offers a positive evaluation of the psychologists' explanation in the third paragraph, so their explanation is the main point. This explanation was summarized in the fifth sentence of the first paragraph, so we can use that for any question that requires us to use the main point. Or, we can go with our own summary: "Recent psychological research suggests that we may unknowingly infer our thoughts rather than 'know' them directly."

*That said, many Meta-Structures could describe this passage. If you think this passage has a Reporting a Viewpoint, Correcting the Record, Old Approach/New Approach, or Proposing a Hypothesis Meta-Structure, you'll likely come up with the same main point and big-picture understanding of the passage that we did. Remember that the Meta-Structures are here to help us think about and describe the passage's structure. We don't need to be 100% correct in which Meta-Structure we choose to develop a strong understanding of the passage's argument.

Comparison: The most prominent minor Meta-Structure is the comparison. (That said, this passage makes liberal use of the minor Meta-Structures, including several examples and cause-and-effect relationships.) In the first and second paragraphs, especially, we get several comparisons about our thought processes. These comparisons are too numerous to outline here (they're all in the Passage Summary above). But we'll get at least a couple of questions related to these, so it's a good idea to highlight or underline the comparative words like "but" (P1, S1; P1, S4), "while" (P1, S2; P1, S3), "analogous" (P2, S1), and "whereas" (P2, S3).

After this passage was administered on the June 2017 LSAT, many test-takers expressed frustration over how difficult this passage was. Much of this frustration can likely be chalked up to its placement — we generally do not think the second passage will be the most difficult. That said, most would agree the passage is not unusually difficult to understand, despite its abstract subject matter. There are a few analogies to help us understand the topic, and the author repeats several of the key points. A lot of the difficulty with this passage, then, will come through the questions. To help us work through these difficult questions, we should rely on the passage as much as we can. If we have to review or check the passage more than we typically would, that's OK!