#13 – Concept Reference, Must Be True, Subject Perspective

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[Tryan]

I got this question wrong but could you tell me why C is the correct answer.

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Tryan,

Thanks for the question! To find the relevant information in the passage, you have to find the concept discussed in the question stem. In PowerScore rubric, this is a Concept-Reference question: the scope is limited, but there is no exact line or paragraph reference given.

Thus, you have to select some "lead words" from the question stem that will direct you where to go to find the evidence you need. Here you might note we should find where the passage discusses "the illusion of direct knowledge of our own thoughts."

Begin by going back to the passage and finding the relevant citation. This question seems to concern the topic of the second paragraph, taken more or less in its entirety. Let's be clear on what the question is asking so we know how to read this information and where to direct our attention while reading. The question asks how this illusion "arises." Let's see what the evidence in the second paragraph shows.

• Illusion of noninferential knowledge of thoughts analogous to development of expertise.
• When beginning to study something, reasoning processes are long, deliberate, and obvious.
• As expertise develops, these reasoning processes become faster and faster, until these processes are so fast as to be imperceptible.
• Example of chess expertise used.

If the above points illustrate how this "illusion" arises, how could we briefly describe this process? In effect, the thought-inference process becomes so fast that people don't even notice it. This is our prephrase and a pretty good match for answer choice (C).

I hope this helps!

[lp1997]

Hi,

Could someone give me a better sense of why D is incorrect? I can see why C is correct but during my practice test D seemed attractive. I think the reason why it seemed attractive was because of the first part of the answer, which mentioned our inferences being accurate. I guess I thought this meant you're becoming fast and good at making inferences. Is D incorrect because of the second part of the answer, about our perceptions of the world being accurate? The passage did not discuss our perceptions of the world being accurate so I suppose this is out of scope?

Thank you!

[Jennifer Janowsky]

Lp1997,

That's correct! The part of (D) that mentions "perceptions of the world being accurate" is out of scope. Although that answer is really enticing, further reading reveals that the subject of perceiving the world around us is not touched upon explicitly in the passage at all.

I hope that answers your question!

[mjb514]

Can you please explain why B is wrong, thanks.

[Robert Carroll]

mjb,

The discussion beginning at line 25 indicates that knowledge of thoughts is mediated, and only appears not to be. So when answer choice (B) says that "knowledge of our own thoughts is usually unmediated," this isn't true. That is enough to get rid of this answer.

Robert Carroll

[brett1114b]

Could someone please explain why B is wrong? I don't see how the text starting at line 25 indicates that knowledge of thoughts is mediated...

[James Finch]

Hi Brett,

(B) is actually an opposite answer, as it goes directly against what is stated in the passage. Paragraph 2 explains what the psychologists' argument is: as we become experts in an area, such as inferences, we start to make the inferences so quickly that we fool ourselves into believing that we have unmediated, direct knowledge of this area; this process applies to our own personal thoughts as well. So we actually fool ourselves into believing we "know" our thoughts because we're so good at inferring them that we don't notice the mediation happening. But this is still a mediated process, we just don't notice it.

Contrast (B) with (C), which broadly lines up with the Prephrase of tricking ourselves or lacking in self-awareness of our allegedly inferential thought processes, as explained in the second paragraph.

Hope this clears things up!