Q11 - Historian: One traditional childrearing

[mchuynh]

Can someone explain to me why is the answer E and not B?

Thanks

[cyruswhittaker]

This is an inference question, so stay away from answers that require big assumptions.

Answer Choices (B) and (E):

(B): We are told that noone disagrees that the adults raised under the traditional practice were on average as confident as those not raised on this practice. However, we cannot, from merely an average, infer much about the "extremes." And speficially in this choice, we cannot infer about how the "most confident adults" or the "least confident adults" were raised.

(E): We are told that noone disagrees that "adults raised under...as confident as adults not so raised." Thus, if it's true that the loss of self-esteem makes them less confident as adults, then we can combine these two statements to conclusively infer that the traditional practice did not lead to a big loss in self-esteem. Afterall, if this was NOT true (i.e. it DID lead to a significant loss), then the statement that "noone disagrees with" would be false.

[timmydoeslsat]

I suppose I would not be asking this question if the question stem were a most strongly supported. However, with this being a proper inference question, I feel I must ask.

This stimulus basically gives us a chain of reasoning used by some psychologists for their belief.

Practice ---> Damage Self-Esteem ---> Less Confident as Adults

The last sentence of this stimulus is what bothers me. We find out that the children raised under this practice were, on average, as confident as as adults not raised under this practice.

This, however, does not appear to give us enough information to warrant saying "~Less Confident as Adults" to invoke the contrapositive.

We know that the adults raised under this practice are, on average, as confident as adults not so raised, but that does not give us the justification to conclude that these adults are not less confident. I feel that this condition is one that is not relative to other adults, but is relative to themselves. In other words, these adults would have been more confident than they are now even though they are as confident as others not so raised.

Again, my problem originates in that this is a must be true stem instead of a most strongly supported. I could grant that this is somewhat supported, but not demonstrably provable.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Answer choice (E) can be properly inferred from the statements in the stimulus. Essentially, the child psychologists hold two views. First, that practice of making a child sit outside damages a child's self-esteem, and second that damage to a child's self-esteem would make them less confident. The truth of theses two claims would lead to an outcome that contradicts the last sentence - a claim that no disagrees with.

Since the two claims in conjunction create an inconsistency with something we now know to be true, the truth of either claim implies the falsity of the other - exactly as answer choice (E) lays out.

To your question...

I feel that this condition is one that is not relative to other adults, but is relative to themselves. In other words, these adults would have been more confident than they are now even though they are as confident as others not so raised.

What you're not doing is holding all else equal. The comparison is between adults raised under the practice vs. not raised under the practice. I think you're suggesting that there could be other factors that would increase or decrease confidence that are not being captured in the comparison, but the language is about the average individual, and so those other factors should all be neutralized with a large enough sample.

Does that answer your question?

[timmydoeslsat]

Some psychologists believe that damage to self esteem makes children less confident as adults.

This could be taken in two ways:

1. Less confident as adults in comparison to adults not so raised.

2. Less confident as adults in comparison to what they could have been.

While it is true that the stimulus states on average, I interpret it like this:

Could it not be true that 50 kids were raised under this practice and all 50 of these kids were abnormally high on confidence. (Perhaps this is because the parents that would even think of using such a practice brought them up to be very confident people)

So while their confidence was initially at 100, the others under the not so raised practice were at 50.

Those raised under the practice had their confidence fall from 100 to 50. So now, nobody disagrees that the confidence level is the same on average.

However, as we see in this hypothetical, we had a lowering of self-confidence occur.

This hypothetical all depends upon the assumption that the kids raised under this practice were abnormally high on self-confidence.

Since this is a must be true inference, how could this situation not be true?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Some psychologists believe that damage to self esteem makes children less confident as adults.

This could be taken in two ways:

1. Less confident as adults in comparison to adults not so raised.

2. Less confident as adults in comparison to what they could have been.

The second of the two interpretations is the one I believe is implied here.

While it is true that the stimulus states on average, I interpret it like this:

Could it not be true that 50 kids were raised under this practice and all 50 of these kids were abnormally high on confidence. (Perhaps this is because the parents that would even think of using such a practice brought them up to be very confident people)

But doesn't that go against the idea of "on average"? Shouldn't the kids raised with the practice be similar to the kids raised without the practice? I don't think it's consistent with the stimulus, that implies that other the practice in question, all else is equal. The "on average" language prohibits us from selecting groups of kids who are not average.

This hypothetical all depends upon the assumption that the kids raised under this practice were abnormally high on self-confidence.

Since this is a must be true inference, how could this situation not be true?

This assumption contradicts the language of the stimulus.

[timmydoeslsat]

I was under the impression that the language "on average" was simply stating that the average practice raised child is as confident as the average non-practice raised child.

I did not think that "on average" implied similar makeup characteristics from the beginning.

Like if I said, on average, the team members on A are faster than the team members on B.

That sentence is telling me what the situation is now. The average A team guy is faster than the average team B guy. We do not know the starting point for A members and B members. Maybe at one time, the average B was faster than A.

Am I wrong in this assessment?

Thanks for helping Matt

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

My pleasure, and this is one of those frustrating parts to the LSAT in that this sort of dissection of the meaning of "on average" or whether a particular hypothetical could be used to dispute an answer choice is not something you really have the luxury to do during the course of the LSAT.

I think you'd agree that in an actual test environment, you'd go with answer choice (E) as it seems to be the best of the possible answer choices, but we really do want the test-writer to be consistent. In this case, I still think the test-writer is being consistent.

The stimulus says that those who were raised with the practice were, on average, as confident as those who were not raised with the practice. This statement is about the average of all people raised with the practice compared to the average of all people raised without the practice. These sets are very large and there is nothing to suggest that there is any other difference between the two groups. I see your point that the stimulus does not rule out the possibility of some other explanatory difference, but I don't think we should assume one either. My interpretation is that the only difference between the two groups is that one was raised with the practice and the other was not. And so I'd be hesitant to create your hypotheticals about the starting confidence levels of the two groups.

I'd be curious to hear what others have to say on this one though!

[buiaq]

This is how I saw the question (in diagram form).


Stimulus: A -> B
B->C

Implies A -> C

A = traditional child-bearing practice
B = damages self-esteem
C = makes the person less confident as an adult

However as stated in the last sentence, A -> -C is absolutely true (which is that traditional child-bearing practice does not tend to lead to less confident adults).

So If A -> -C, either statement A -> B or B -> C must be wrong.

And answer choice E captures that exactly by basically saying that If B->C, then A-> B must be wrong
(A -> -B)

x
B -> C
A -> -C

x = A -> -B

Hope that helps.

[hj_1120]

Is it possible for E to be bidirectional and still be correct?

A = Children's loss of self-esteem makes them less confident as adults

B= = Traditional childrearing practice did not cause significant loss of self-esteem

E is stating that it is A--> B OR if A is true, then B is true

Since we are assuming that everything in stimulus is to be true, wouldn't restatement of a portion or combination of the portions to be true?

[zip]

I looked at this question and choose E, but was wracked by doubt. Could there be a case where the question were say people who eat lemons are believed by some researchers to be less likely to develop colds. Howver all agree that lemon eaters develop colds with the same frequency as non-lemon eaters. Therefore, the belief that lemons tend to reduce colds is false. This would be an invalid argument. Maybe non- lemon eaters eat other things that reduce colds. I think the validity or lack thereof of the credited inference trades as Matt said on the concept of less... Does it mean less than average? If it does the inference is valid. If it means reduced relative to what it would otherwise be, the argument would be invalid. That is say there are 10 methods of raising kids including the traditional one--they might all suck ( or at least some of them affecting a sufficient number of children to bring the average down to that of the average for traditionally raised children) and either through loss of self esteem or via some other mechanism make a child less confident than he would otherwise be as an adult. The average effect could still hold because a sufficient quanta of those raise the other child rearing practices which have the equivalent deleterious effect on a child's later confidence as an adult. ( There would of course have to be at least a possible way to raise children which didn't involve the same loss, or the otherwise raised prong wouldn't apply, since the otherwise prong implies that there could be some other possibility w/r/t increased confidence if the children were raised differently.)

I'm just not cool with this problem: The inference is not a valid one. I think less, when not directly used as a comparative to a group, is in most LSAT problems and in common parlance not used vis a vis average, but rather in terms of whether it is a factor that lessens something.

Fortunately, in reviewing a couple thousand LSAT questions, I've only found 1 other must be true that was shaky, so I feel confident that defects I pointed out in this question are aberrations.

[zip]

These sets are very large and there is nothing to suggest that there is any other difference between the two groups. I see your point that the stimulus does not rule out the possibility of some other explanatory difference, but I don't think we should assume one either. My interpretation is that the only difference between the two groups is that one was raised with the practice and the other was not. And so I'd be hesitant to create your hypotheticals about the starting confidence levels of the two groups.

I'd be curious to hear what others have to say on this one though!

Think this touches on the essence of what a a deductive argument is, that is one that if the premises are true the conclusion must be. As such it is within the scope to consider other possible explanations which would allow the premises to be true and the conclusion false. If there are such explanations the argument is invalid.

A year or so ago, I got a chance to view some LSAT problems which had been removed from scoring and the suggested correction, and I had a pretty good feel for what went wrong in most of them and was able to anticipate the correction. I think in this case, it's the hanging less. Less always begs the question less than what? I thinks Tim's point that the sample could be so small as to be uninformative is a good point too... though I think it's a less glaring defect than the hanging less is. Again, because so many questions involve sample size and the precise use of comparative statements and statements about effects and what this implies about quantity or other measurements, I think that this questions is a bit of a stinker for being so loose in regards to these issues.

[s.atrmachin3]

Bump. First time poster.

I'm surprised to see that (A) didn't get much consideration/discussion. That's the choice that really racked my brain (and ultimately, I ended up choosing it over (E)).

The stimulus says: "[...] many child psychologists... because they believe that such practices damage the child's self-esteem and that damage to children's self-esteem makes them less confident as adults."

It concludes by apparently contradicting this belief; essentially saying that the practice did not lead to kids being less confident as adults...

Hmm.. while typing I had an epiphany. Is answer choice (A) incorrect because the psychologists could be incorrect about the first part of their claim -- that the practice damages self-esteem -- while still being correct about the second part of their claim -- that loss of self-esteem makes kids less confident as adults?

If that's not correct then I'm at a loss for why (A) isn't correct.

[junggyuhan]

Can someone explain why A is wrong?...just like the person above my post Thx!!

[tommywallach]

Hey Guys,

(A) is definitely tricky here, but it's definitely off-base. For me, the strongest reason is that this represents a false comparison. We simply can't compare present-day children to past children. It could be that what didn't hurt confidence back then does hurt confidence now.

You could also make a slightly more complex statistical argument. We know that adults raised under the traditional practice were as confident as adults not-so-raised. However, it could still be that this practice damaged self-esteem and made people less confident, but the people raised under some other practice also had their self-esteem damaged and thus were made less confident (by whatever methods replaced sitting children outside).

Hope that helps!

-t

[deedubbew]

Even though I got this question right, I still feel uneasy about the last sentence. It says that no one disagrees, yet it is used as a premise, while the psychologists claims are not. "No one disagrees" is different to me that making the statement that I should assume to be true. If no one disagrees, it's still also possible that no one agrees. This one would really bother me on test day if I had to keep second guessing my selected answer, thinking there was something tricky I missed. When I hit inference questions, I am looking for an answer choice that MUST be true.

[mendy4u]

Hey
I chose A instead of E, nobody seemed to have the same prob with E as me. So any explanation would be appreciated. The conclusion of stimulus says "on AVERAGE as confident as adults not so raised." yet answer E says "tend not to cause SIGNIFICANT loss of self-esteem", so lets say it does lower self confidence a little bit (but not SIGNIFICANTLY) that would still ,however little, effect the average confidence of adults...and that contradicts the conclusion of the stimulus. Anybody got anything??

[ganbayou]

Is E kind of a conclusion of the stimulus?
So the last sentence kind of denies what the historian talked about so far, and E is the conclusion based on the last sentence?

Thanks,

[maryadkins]

Another good question. And yes...I do kind of view (E) as a restatement of the last sentence of the stimulus, combined with the previous sentence. And that's okay! The thing about Inference questions is that there's no such thing as an answer choice that is "too similar" to a statement in the stimulus! In other words, "but it was already stated" is NEVER a good reason not to pick an answer choice to an Inference question. And so if, as we do with this question, we encounter an answer that seems to just restate or slightly rephrase something we've been told...we should keep it! That's a clue that it's a valid inference. Good work!

[haeeunjee]

Hey Guys,

(A) is definitely tricky here, but it's definitely off-base. For me, the strongest reason is that this represents a false comparison. We simply can't compare present-day children to past children. It could be that what didn't hurt confidence back then does hurt confidence now.

You could also make a slightly more complex statistical argument. We know that adults raised under the traditional practice were as confident as adults not-so-raised. However, it could still be that this practice damaged self-esteem and made people less confident, but the people raised under some other practice also had their self-esteem damaged and thus were made less confident (by whatever methods replaced sitting children outside).

Hope that helps!

-t

I don't understand this explanation. (A) isn't about present-day children, but about "present-day child psychologists." I thought (A) was wrong because of two reasons: 1- "The beliefs (plural) of many child psychologists... are incorrect" is not inferable because we are only looking at a SINGLE belief that they hold (that practices like the one described hut self-esteem which makes them less confident. Too extreme.

2- We don't actually know if the child psychologists are incorrect, or if the people who are not "disagreeing" are incorrect, or both are somewhat correct (this is possible in the case that there are practices that damage self-esteem which in turn lowers confidence, but not this particular practice. (E) gives this narrowed scope, providing the clause "If children's loss of self-esteem decreases confidence..." So child psychologists' belief in the effects of damaging practices is true, but not necessarily exemplified, in this case, by this practice.