Notice that in order to argue that younger children don't regard intention as relevant, the author must assume that the young children have the ability to discern intention in the first place. If these kids are not mature enough to discern intentions, we cannot argue that they regard intention as irrelevant.

I go through each answer choice in the full solution below (taken from the GMATFix App).



-Patrick

This is a Weaken question and hence, conclusion of the argument is at question. Conclusion here is - Younger children do not regard people's intentions as relevant to punishment. To arrive at the right answer we also need to see the underlying assumption that author makes. I feel by making this conclusion, author assumes that children are able to differentiate intentions and if this assumption is true, then and only then conclusion stands correct.

We also need to notice the difference here - Younger Childern & Older Children. As conclusion is about Younger Children, we can safely eliminate answer choices that talk about so we can eliminate (D). If we take answer choices as they are, then (B) should strengthen the argument and not weaken. As in this case, children decided on punishments as severity of harm was mentioned. So we can eliminate (B) as well.

Option (C) is too generalized. As Conclusion is specifically about younger children, we can eliminate answer that generalizes from a specific conclusion.

Option (E) contradicts conclusion and might be considered as a contender for this reason. However, it was also clearly mentioned in the argument that younger children assigned punishments that did not vary according to intentions. So this option is a bit weaker compared to (A)

Coming at (A), this choice tells us that children, perhaps, did not understand the intentions as someone with mature sense of human psychology could have.

And I personally feel this should be the answer.

Answer should be A