#7 - Although instinct enables organisms to make complex

[Beth Hayden]

Hi Asid,

Your first diagram looks good, the second one is a little trickier. Here's how I would write it:

Flexible brain Large # neurons
NOT large # neurons NOT flexible brain (contrapositive)

Insect brain NOT large # neurons
Large # neurons NOT an insect (contrapositive)

Based on the wording, we can assume that all behavior is either instinctual or non-instinctual, so if an organism's brain is not flexible enough for non instinctual behavior, it is ONLY capable of acting on instinct.

Tying all this together, you could create this diagram:

Insect brain NOT large # neurons NOT flexible brain Not capable of noninstinctual behavior Only capable of instinctual behavior

That is reflected in answer choice (B).

Hope that helps!
Beth

[KendrickFrontiers]

Hey PowerScore team,

I really struggled with the stimulus of this question, particularly in reference to the brain mechanisms being capable of flexible behavior. The way I read it, I assumed that brain mechanisms were only a part of the brain structure (and not representative of the whole brain), thus perhaps one brain mechanism could be capable of flexible behavior within a single brain and some brain mechanisms may not be capable of flexible behavior.
I had a hard time coming to the inference that insect behavior is purely instinctual because what if it isn't representative of the whole brain?
I could be making an unwarranted assumption irrelevant to the question, but just wanted to hear what you guys thought!
Thanks in advance!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi KendrickFrontiers!

Happy to address question. In one way, the stimulus is referring to part of the brain rather than the entire thing by referring to a "brain mechanism capable of flexible behavior." There could be other brain mechanisms that are also parts of the brain, such as brain mechanisms not capable of flexible behavior.

To get to the inference you mentioned, we're told in the stimulus,

FB SN

That is, flexible behavior requires a sufficient number of neurons. We're also told,

IB SN

That is, if it's an insect brain, then it does not have sufficient neurons for flexible behavior. We can take the contrapositive of this to get,

SN IB

If it has sufficient neurons for flexible behavior, then it's not an insect brain. Another way of representing this general type of conditional (A B) is with a double not-arrow:

SN IB

With either the double not-arrow or the single, we can connect these to the first conditional:

FB SN IB

This can be shortened to:

FB IB

If it's flexible (noninstinctual) behavior, then it's not an insect brain. If it's an insect brain, then it's not capable of flexible/noninstinctual behavior. This inference is reflected in answer choice (B) "Insect behavior is exclusively instinctual."