#15 - Babies who can hear and have hearing parents

[shwetav singh]

Can anyone help me out with the logic!!!

[T.B.Justin]

I think this is a phenomenon of babies with hearing parents that hear and how those babies develop communication skills analogous to deaf babies with deaf parents and how these babies develop communication skills.

Hearing babies with hearing parents: those babies seem to verbally babble before verbally speaking
Deaf babies with deaf parents: these babies seem to babble with hand gestures


Maybe that will help and you can take the possible implications from the way I interpreted it a step further.

[Adam Tyson]

Welcome to the Forum, shwetav singh! I'll do my best!

The stimulus tells us that hearing babies with hearing parents learn to babble at a certain age, and they do so as a precursor to speaking. That is, babbling comes first, speaking follows. Further, we learn that deaf babies with deaf parents who use sign language also learn to babble in sign at the same age that the hearing babies are babbling orally.

The stem is a Cannot Be True question. We need to select an answer that the facts in the stimulus proves to be false. Pick something that is impossible if the stimulus is correct. Anything that could be true is a wrong answer. A good prephrase here might be something like "babbling is unique to spoken language" (because it is not - babies who use sign language also babble).

Answer A: The stimulus tells us nothing about which words or types of words are learned first or last or what is simple or complex. There is no evidence to dispute this claim, so it could be true and cannot be the correct answer.

Answer B: This is the correct answer. This matches our prephrase to some extent. It cannot be true that development of language requires development of the vocal tract based on vocal activity, because deaf babies also develop speech, and they do so in non-vocal ways (sign language, not through speaking).

Answer C: The stimulus tells us nothing about a hypothetical third group of babies that do not get exposed to adults communicating with each other in their presence, so this claim could be true and cannot be the correct answer.

Answer D: The stimulus doesn't tell us that the babies are aware of what they are doing or what it means, only what they do. It's possible that babies babble without realizing that they can use their sounds or signs to indicate a purpose like "I want food" or "my diaper is wet" or "that's fake news!" Since they could be unaware, this answer is incorrect.

Answer E: The stimulus tells us nothing about hand gestures made by hearing babies, nor does it tell us anything about sounds made by deaf babies. Either or both of these could be part of the language development process that just wasn't mentioned by the author. Since this was not mentioned it could be true, and is incorrect.

Wrong answers to Cannot Be True questions are often about things that the argument did not address or bring up. Since the author didn't discuss them, they could be true. The Fact Test has to be applied to these answers, and if the facts of the stimulus don't DISPROVE them then they are possible and thus not the right answer. It's the one answer that the stimulus proves to be impossible, based on the facts in the stimulus, that we must select. These are rare questions in LR, but when they crop up, that's the way to attack them. Prephrase what is impossible, eliminate any answer that is based on an unknown or otherwise could be true.

If you happen to be working through our course materials you will find out more about this rare type, and a couple others, in one of the final lessons. If you have the LR Bible, check out the chapter on Cannot Be True questions so you can be ready for these when they do show up, which is about once on every other test.

Good luck with your continued studies, and thanks for joining us!

[ashpine17]

I took out B because it said depends primarily upon rather than just depends or depends solely since I thought it was a possibility that language development depended mostly on the vocal tract even if deaf babies could use hand gestures to communicate.

And I thought E was a mbf since hand gestures are an indicator of language development only in deaf babies...are the hand signs referenced here referring to any random hand signs or specifically the ones deaf babies use to sign?

[Robert Carroll]

ash,

"Depends only on" would be a biconditional indicator. "Depends primarily on" is still saying that the thing on which it depends is a necessary condition. So answer choice (B) is claiming something to be a necessary condition which can't be necessary - deaf babies lack the condition, yet still develop language competency.

For answer choice (E), we don't get from the stimulus that "hand gestures are an indicator of language development only in deaf babies." My objection is to the "only" there. They certainly are indicators in deaf babies, but why only deaf? The stimulus doesn't say that, so it's outside the scope. Being outside the scope of the stimulus means we can't be sure it's true or false, which means it could be true.

Robert Carroll