Critical Reasoning

In 1973, a remote town first acquired television. Shortly before broadcasts began there, a study was made of children's behavior. A similar study in the same community, after two years of TV, showed that the aggression rate among children of this age had increased by 160%. The conclusion drawn was that TV plays an important role in generating aggressive behavior in children. A second study, covering the same years, was made in two similar communities that had had television for decades. This study showed no change in the aggression rate from 1973 to 1975. The results of the second study:

A) suggest that the prevalence of violent themes in TV programming may be explained by the tendencies toward violence that are deeply-rooted in human nature.

B) indicate that different social groups may react quite differently to similar stimuli.

C) demonstrate that long-term exposure to TV has no more severe effects than short-term exposure.

D) support the conclusion drawn from the first study.

E) disprove the conclusion drawn from the first study.

Well this question is from 800score.com. But I am still confused with the OA. IMO the answer should be C. As we see the first line it says that "town first acquired televsion" which means that first television acquired during 1973 and after 2 years i.e. 1975 the study showed the behaviour of the children. whereas the second study covers the same years i.e. 1973 to 1975, but the communities had televsion for decades. That means during the initial period it may have happened that the same results as of the 1st study was seen. So during these decades the aggression rate would have decreased or would have resulted in less severe effects than the short-term exposure.
Kindly explain how I am wrong & how to come to the OA. Request for the logic behind the OA which is D.

I agree with D.

Think this way, that the immediate exposure to TV increases aggression but the increment has a limit....After certain time, it does not increase.
However, in case of long exposure, can you assume that the aggression adopted few years ago is vanished? It may be that aggression stays but there is no increase in it. That means the long terms exposure also has negative effects which is against of what is mentioned in C.

HTH!

Not a great question here. Answer choices are a strange mixture of actual statements with a couple of "bold-faced" kind of answers for D and E.

Are you sure that the answer is D? I have to disagree with gunjan's reason for eliminating C. Choice C does not say that long-term exposure has no negative effects, it says, "demonstrate that long-term exposure to TV has no more severe effects than short-term exposure." So this seems to be saying that the impacts do not increase with increased viewing. C seems reasonable to me.

Please confirm the OA.

This is poor question. I disagree with C after eliminating A, B, and E. But I am very very confused with choice D. This question from LSAT. Here is detail explanation:
""This is a complicated question and requires a complicated explanation. It is important to keep in mind just what the reported results are. Perhaps most important, nothing is said about the absolute values of the aggression rates, but only about changes in the rates. And nothing is said about how the rates in the other two communities compared with those of the first. The first study correlated two changes-the change from no TV to TV in 1973, as well as the change in aggression rates from 1973 to 1975. The tentative conclusion is that the first of these changes was the cause of the second change. The second study focused on communities in which there was no change --they were already well accustomed to TV in 1973. (Thus the second study focuses on a sort of natural "control group.") That study found that there was no change of the second type - aggression rates in those communities remained constant from 1973 to 1975. The second study thus tends to reduce the plausibility of the suggestion that some change other than the introduction of TV caused the rise in aggressiveness in the first community. If there was some other cause, at least it doesn't seem to have been acting in the communities of the second study. And that reduces the range of possible candidates. Thus the second study tends to make more probable the conclusion drawn from the first study."

David@VeritasPrep wrote:Not a great question here. Answer choices are a strange mixture of actual statements with a couple of "bold-faced" kind of answers for D and E.

Are you sure that the answer is D? I have to disagree with gunjan's reason for eliminating C. Choice C does not say that long-term exposure has no negative effects, it says, "demonstrate that long-term exposure to TV has no more severe effects than short-term exposure." So this seems to be saying that the impacts do not increase with increased viewing. C seems reasonable to me.

Please confirm the OA.

D is the correct choice and tuanquang269 has put the explanation to how D is derived. This explanation is copied from the source of the question. But I was not at all able to understand through it... If you can through some light on it then it would be gr8...

gunjan1208 wrote:I agree with D.

Think this way, that the immediate exposure to TV increases aggression but the increment has a limit....After certain time, it does not increase.
However, in case of long exposure, can you assume that the aggression adopted few years ago is vanished? It may be that aggression stays but there is no increase in it. That means the long terms exposure also has negative effects which is against of what is mentioned in C.

HTH!

It would be grateful if you could further elaborate the negative effects through long term exposures.

gunjan1208 wrote:I agree with D.

Think this way, that the immediate exposure to TV increases aggression but the increment has a limit....After certain time, it does not increase.
However, in case of long exposure, can you assume that the aggression adopted few years ago is vanished? It may be that aggression stays but there is no increase in it. That means the long terms exposure also has negative effects which is against of what is mentioned in C.

HTH!

It would be grateful if you could further elaborate the negative effects through long term exposures.

tuanquang269 - This is ABSOLUTELY not an LSAT question. I checked my sources and I can confirm that it is not from any LSAT test from 1991. The way it is written is not like an LSAT question at all. I saw some site when I Googled this and that site was an LSAT study site using unofficial questions. It is typically for a poorly written question to be offered by several sources.

I thought about this question after I responded and I came to the conclusion that the support for choice D was in the nature of a "control group." Then I read the explanation that tuanquang269 posted and it said there as well that it was a "control group." I can see what they are trying to do, but it is not well done.

So let's look at why C is not correct and why D is not a great answer either.

Viren - C over reaches in its conclusion. It states "demonstrate that long-term exposure to TV has no more severe effects than short-term exposure." But this is an overstatement. At best we only know about the aggression rates and not about the other possible "severe effects" of long-term TV exposure. Other impacts could be obesity, attention-deficit, etc. So we cannot say that this study shows that long-term exposure has "no more severe effects than short-term."

How about D? Does the second study "support the conclusion drawn from the first study?" That conclusion is "that TV plays an important role in generating aggressive behavior in children." Now the first study is of kids that just got television and they became 160% more aggressive. The conclusion is that the TV was the cause. How does the 2nd study figure in? Well the writers of the question mean for the second study to be a control group - I guess that because the other two communities had been exposed to TV for decades and the rates of aggression in those places did not go up that we are supposed to say, "well the lack of change there means that introducing TV causes violence.

Yet this is not the conclusion -- the conclusion of the 1st study is "that TV plays an important role in generating aggressive behavior in children." So this is not saying that the INTRODUCTION of TV generates aggressive behavior but that TV does this. Therefore children who already have TV does not make a good control group. A much better control group is "Children who have NEVER HAD TV."

I can see that D is meant to be the conclusion.
Yet this question is flawed not only due to the strange mix of answer choices, but also because D is not really well supported.

RULE: Expert is always right.

Just to mention my reasoning:
premises:--
A- 2 year term TV exposure increases aggression
B- Study of the community where TV is there since long has the same levels of aggression....
Conclusion:--
no change in the aggression rate from 1973 to 1975

My reasoning for choosing D: Since we do not have the higher level of aggression in long term exposed town. What we can understand form this is that for these towns aggression level might have increased in the short term. (you see, we cant attack the premises or conclusion, they are facts expected not to be altered)...If that's the case, C would have been perfect answer.

But, there might be twist in the answer....Can you deny the possibility of the aggression to go very high and then there were certain steps taken by the local govt. to curb the aggression, may be censorship of some programes...In this case C has limits.

David, please let me know if my way of thinking is wrong....I dont want it to work wrong way on the test day
Thank you!!

Thank David, anyway this is not good question