Supplemental Logical Reasoning Questions Question 28

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello I am going through the supplemental questions for Logical Reasoning and have a couple of questions.

For Question 28. The question stem states that Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
So the conclusion is "Therefore if the United States children are to do well in mathematics they must watch less television.

I understand that for assumption questions you turn them into weaken questions, SO do you not need to do the assumption negation technique? I though the conclusion contains a conditional? I thought answer choice C was the logical opposite of the conclusion.

However, the correct answer choice was E. Is this because it goes against the premise that South Korean children are competent in these areas? But how is this going toward the assumption of the argument?

Thankyou
Sarah

[BethRibet]

Hi again Sarah,

Thanks for the question. In turning assumption questions "into weaken questions", the basic idea is that you want to identify the weakness or flaw in the argument, as the weakness is -- generally -- that the author is assuming something is true without adequate evidence.

In considering the answer choices, ask yourself -- if this is true as stated, does it support the argument and strengthen the conclusion. If it doesn't, it's not the right answer choice. An assumption that the argument depends on would certainly, if true, make the argument stronger. If it does do that, then to test out whether it's the strongest available answer, you can try the negation technique -- especially if you're stuck between two answer choices. If the answer choice, if not true, destroys or radically weakens the argument, then indeed that assumption is vital to the argument.

In this argument, the assumption being made is that the cause of the stronger performance by Korean children as compared to U.S. children is not being caused by anything other than difference in television habits. One example of an alternate cause for the differences in performance would be if the Korean school system was much better and stronger than the U.S. Then, rather than attributing better educational performance to television, it might all or partly be about better quality education. So the author is assuming that this is *NOT* a factor, that the U.S. is almost as good, equally good, or better than Korea, essentially, so that television still seems like a viable explanation for the difference in performance.

Notice that answer choice C incorporates the factor of what children "want" -- wanting, or desire is not in fact part of this argument. The argument focuses solely on the behavior of watching television. So the answer choice is actually not the opposite of the argument.

Hope this helps!

Beth