Critical Reasoning

Psychologists who wish to have one of their book review nominated for the prestigious Boatwright Psychology Review award should not submit book review articles that review more than three books at a time. This is because editors for the Boatwright Psychology Review will not publish a book review article if it is too lengthy and cumbersome to read. In their submission guidelines, the editors explicitly state that review articles that cover more than three books at a time are considered too lengthy and cumbersome to read.

Which of the following statements represents an assumption upon which the argument relies?

A) The book reviews articles that covers the most books must be the lengthiest and most cumbersome article to read.

B) If a book review article is published in the Boatwright Psychology Review, that article will receive the prestigious Boatwright Psychology Review award.

C) All articles published in the Boatwright Psychology Review must be limited to a certain length specified by the editors.

D) The Boatwright Psychology Review editors generally prefer book review articles that cover one book rather than books.

E) To be nominated for the Boatwright Psychology Review award, a psychologist's book review article must be published in the Boatwright Psychology Review.

Discuss. I felt that this question was really tricky. It's questions like these that get me nervous for CR on test day. Will post OA after sufficient posts.

IMO E

Cool care to explain?

IMO E

Conclusion: Psychologists who wish to have one of their book review nominated for the prestigious Boatwright Psychology Review award should not submit book review articles that review more than three books at a time.

Premise 1 :editors for the Boatwright Psychology Review will not publish a book review article if it is too lengthy and cumbersome to read.

Premise 2:The editors explicitly state that review articles that cover more than three books at a time are considered too lengthy and cumbersome to read.

Book to be nominated for review---Should not exceed more than 3 books at time.

To publish a book review-----should not be too lengthy

Too lengthy----are the ones that cover more than 3 books.

Connecting all above three, we see that

In order to be nominated for the review award, article must be published.

ECorrectly states this assumption.

Despite your answer change, the explanation is better than what Kaplan Advanced offered. Great job and thanks!

Perminology wrote:Despite your answer change, the explanation is better than what Kaplan Advanced offered. Great job and thanks!

@Perminology, Kaplan Negate test can be apllied better for assumption based questions.

Lets try it out:

E says:
To be nominated for the Boatwright Psychology Review award, a psychologist's book review article must be published in the Boatwright Psychology Review.

Try to negate it:

If we can nominate for the award with getting it published or with out getting it reviewed by the editiors means the whole argument falls apart.

So E gives a necessary condition for which the whole argument depends upon....

Its like whats the big fun if u could nominate the review article without getting published or edited...!!!

Both getso and gmatmachoman's solutions are excellent here.

Let's discuss getso's solution first. She applied the classic Kaplan method for identifying assumptions: She arrived at the correct answer by connecting the terms that are differentially present in the conclusion and evidence. She noticed that the conclusion was a recommendation for those book-review writers who wished to win the award while the evidence was a necessary conditoin for getting your book review published. In order to figure out the assumption, she just bridged these two differentially present ideas: "the author must be assuming that getting published is necessary for winning the award."

The classic Kaplan method works so well because the author has to prove EVERY idea in the conclusion. Therefore, a great place to start is by looking for those ideas in the conclusion that did NOT appear in the evidence. Then, we can say that at least he is assuming something about that new idea. And, then we do the same thing the other way around--we ask: what is the idea (or ideas) in the evidence that was not (or were not) in the conclusion? Then, we connect those discrepantly present ideas. That is our prediction, and then we scan for a match.

gmatmachoman's solution was also great as he employed the Kaplan denial test to prove that the author's argument depends on choice E--that without choice E, the argument falls apart.

____________

This argument is called a scope shift: the scope of the evidence was about requirements for getting published while the scope of the conclusion was winning the award. These kinds of arguments are only difficult because the shift in scope is subtle, and if you are too casual, the argument sounds reasonable. To guard against this casualness, when reading arguments, you need to be ruthless with the author, and alert while reading. You have to say to the author: "you have your evidence and nothing else". Here: "Mr. Author, you only have evidence about publication but you are trying to make a conclusion about winning the award. Because I am ruthless and alert, reasonable and commonsensical though your argument may be, I am going to point out that you are making this assumption."

OMG what a splendid reply Testluv....

I wish I could have been in Toronto for you to mentor me !!
But this wonderful forum has bridged that gap..Thanks...