#13 - Many symptoms of mental illnesses are affected by

[Zach Foreman]

leric,
that looks good. I would definitely focus more on the prephrase than the analysis of answers in your prep though. How would you prephrase?

I would draw a diagram:

variations in organic factors --->variations in symptoms of mental illness
This is a classic social vs biological causes argument. I would immediately prephrase a alt cause then based on this, namely, variations in social factors as the alt cause. Matching your prephrase will be significantly faster than eliminating wrong answers because the latter requires quite a bit more careful reading.

[ieric01]

Thanks Zach for the advice. I will focus more on the pre phrase and experiment on how it affects my speed. Thank you.

[desiboy96]

Hello, I'm really lost and I was hoping maybe if someone could explain if my reasoning is correct in picking the right answer and eliminating the most popular wrong answer choice.

I managed to get this answer choice right by eliminating all of the wrong choices but I'm still baffled at how I managed to get this right considering how confused I was about the nature of the argument.

After reading the premises and conclusion I thought, "Okay. There is a premise related to cause and effect regarding these organic factors and mental illness symptoms. But just because there is a variation in symptoms, that does not mean that the organic factors are not distributed evenly. For all we know, they could be distributed around the word evenly but for some reason, we're just not detecting it".

I managed to eliminate all of the other choices with ease and came down between the correct answer and the one about nutrition. I eliminated the choice about nutrition because to me , that choice, just seemed to indicate that nutrition, or lack there of, leads to an organic factor (deficiencies in the brain). Since I thought that this answer did not impact the argument because this just shows what can impact an organic factor (a deficiency in the brain), I picked the correct answer choice.

I think where I went wrong in my reasoning was that I focused more so on how the organic factors, as per the conclusion, are not evenly distributed as opposed to the causal nature of the argument that everyone has been talking about. But the problem I have been having is that I don't quite see this causal reasoning reflected in the conclusion and was hoping for some clarification

[Jeremy Press]

Hi desiboy,

It's a good question you ask at the end, but first I just want to congratulate you on what you're doing that's working. As you've probably noticed, there are times on this test where you can confidently eliminate four answers and can't confidently eliminate one answer. And in those cases (like this question), choosing the answer you have left works to get you a correct answer and an extra point. Is this an ideal method? Of course not, and it's why you're still pushing for deeper reasoning here (which I also applaud you on). But from the perspective of smart test-taking, you're already doing things that are setting you up for success.

Now, on to the question. Look just at the second and third sentences of the stimulus. The author goes straight from the observation that there is variation in manifestation of mental illness symptoms, to the conclusion that there must be variation in distribution of organic factors. If those were the only two sentences in the stimulus, the argument would almost make no sense. Because I certainly can't see any logical link between mental illness symptoms and organic factors. So how did the author make this strange leap? Because of the first sentence, which establishes at least some causal relationship between mental illness symptoms and organic factors. That relationship is, in an implied way, part of the conclusion. How does the author conclude that organic factors are distributed unevenly? Because the author assumes that the mental illness symptoms we see (the ones distributed unevenly) are being caused by those organic factors. There's not enough evidence in the stimulus to establish this, and an alternate cause (like the one suggested by answer choice C) undermines the argument and shows its flaw.

If you're looking for direct language in the conclusion that incorporates this causal relationship, check out this phrase: "the organic factors that affect symptoms of mental illnesses." This also tells us the author is making the quantitative conclusion on the basis of an assumed causal relationship.

I hope this helps!

[desiboy96]

Okay that helps clear things up. Thank you Jeremy!