Critical Reasoning

Shy adolescents often devote themselves totally to a hobby to help distract them from the loneliness brought on by their shyness. Sometimes they are able to become friends with others who share their hobby. But if they lose interest in that hobby, their loneliness may be exacerbated. So developing an all-consuming hobby is not a successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness.

Which one of the following assumptions does the argument depend on?
(A) Eventually, shy adolescents are going to want a wider circle of friends than is provided by their hobby.
(B) No successful strategy fro overcoming adolescent loneliness ever intensifies that loneliness.
(C) Shy adolescents will lose interest in their hobbies if they do not make friends through their engagement in those hobbies.
(D) Some other strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness is generally more successful than is developing an all-consuming hobby.
(E) Shy adolescents devote themselves to hobbies mainly because they want to make friends.


OA : B

I selected C

Though it is closer to the conclusion as compared with the option C,the correct option seems to be a very basic & weak assumption.

One more doubt :

As I was revisiting the question , I noticed that it seems to be a supporter assumption question , in which there is something "new " or "rogue" info stated in the conclusion.So obviously the task at hand must be to link the new info ( here - successful strategy ) with something to make the conclusion more logical.
On this basis I am left with options - B & D..This sort of method really helps in getting down to the correct option & really saves a lot of time.
Is this method sound enough?

This question dosn't seem to be of a kind of GMAT assumption types...
By the process of elimination we can come down to B....

A,C, E -> refers to opposite way... they are not able to make friends thats why they go to pursue hobby not otherway round...

D -> Out of scope... No other strategy is discussed in the argument

Left with B: though it is not an assumption, I do think.. Its more of a kind of conclusion.. But this is the most suitable of all...

This question is indeed a little different from an assumption on the GMAT - but you can go ahead and treat it in the same way. A first strategy is to understand what evidence you have - because in an assumption question you will not get new evidence, so you need to protect the evidence that you have.

The conclusion is "developing an all-consuming hobby is not a successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness." The reason for this is that if the shy adolescents lose interest in their hobby they will be even lonelier. This is the evidence that you have to work with. So you need an answer choice that protects this link that indicates that because it is possible for a hobby to increase loneliness therefore it is not a good strategy to confront loneliness.

Answer choice B does says almost exactly this. "No successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness ever intensifies that loneliness."

Another way to approach this is to negate the answer choice and the negated answer choice should directly harm the conclusion. In this case, if we negate the conclusion we find something like, "At least one successful strategy for overcoming loneliness intensifies that loneliness." So this would certainly undermine the conclusion that this strategy is not a successful one.