#21 - At a large elementary school researchers studied

[daydreamingsamosa]

Okay I know I'm overthinking this, but I chose B instead of C because I thought it suggested an alternate cause to the effect which would be that: those who completed the program were already more intelligent/high achieving than those who didn't. This would give a cause that would be behind both program completion + achievements after the program. I'm def overthinking this because C clearly provides an alternate cause right??

[KelseyWoods]

Hi daydreamingsamosa!

Check out Jay's discussion of answer choice (B) above:

The issue I have with B is one of relativity vs absolutism. B implies that the children who completed the program started at a higher level of academic achievement than those who didn't finish, which makes us flirt with the idea that perhaps it wasn't chess skills at all but rather innate knowledge or intelligence that attributed to their ending levels. Problem with that line of reasoning however, is that after the program concluded it wasn't the case that the students who finished had high levels of schoolwork achievement, but rather that they had an INCREASE in achievement levels. Since we are concluding about the relative growth rather than an absolute mark of achievement level, their starting levels were largely irrelevant to how much they may have increased over time.

The argument is about an increase in achievement levels which means that wherever they started is irrelevant. It's about the change from when they started to after completion. But good job being on the lookout for those alternate causes!

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[roesttezz]

I don't see why (C) weakens the causal relationship claimed. Because even when needing a higher grade for the membership promotes achievement, chess playing can also do this simultaneously.

Two interpretations are:

• Chess playing exercises helped the students get the grades, which makes them think of attending the chess team because they now satisfy a higher grade requirement, which doesn't at all affect the causal relationship

• The students want to seek membership in the chess team, which requires higher achievement, so they participate in the program to have higher grades, which they did, which confirms the causal relationship

• The students want to seek membership in the chess team during the program, and the team happens to require higher achievement, and the program still helps them attain such achievement

As both motivations can occur simultaneously, the existence of an alternative/complementary motivation doesn't weaken the claim that chess playing increases such achievement.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi roesttezz,

It appears from your interpretations that you're assuming that the chess program DID increase the students' academic achievements. The problem is that we don't actually know that at all based on the evidence. This is what the argument concludes, but like most causal arguments, it is inherently flawed.

Here's what we know.

A small group of children learned to play chess in an experimental program and then most had an increase in their academic achievement. Based on that (and nothing more), the argument concludes that the skills developed by learning chess caused the increase in the students' academic performances.

It's important to note that the causal argument is specifically about the "reasoning power and spatial intuition" developed from chess caused the students' improved academic performance. In other words, a situation like Answer C which suggests that the students were motivated to get better grades in order to be on the school chess team does not fall within this causal explanation.

Maybe the chess skills caused the academic improvement, maybe they didn't. There could be any number of possible explanations for the students' improvement that have nothing to do with chess. We just don't know either way.

You mentioned that chess skills could be improving academic performance simultaneously with Answer C, but it is also possible that the skills developed learning chess had nothing to do with the students' improvement and that all of the students' improvement was due to some other cause (such as a desire to join the chess team, as mentioned in Answer C.) Given that this is a possibility (even if we are not certain that is what really happened), it weakens the claim that chess skills by themselves improve academic performance.

[Dancingbambarina]

HI,

I chose C, correctly, but becasue I thought it implied a reverse relationship. Instead of chess leading to intelligence, intelligence leads to playing better chess. That is, if after finishing the program they SUBSEQUENTLY sought to join a chess team with a GPA standard, they would not have had so much time to increase their GPA, so their GPA must've been high to begin with, which LED to their increase in chess-playing ability.

Effect ----> Cause

Please may you let me know your thoughts.

Thanks very much

[vga1958]

Hi. Still having trouble with answer choice D. I realize it does not refer to the subset addressed in the stimulus (children who have completed course) but at the same time, The conclusion does not have to do with the program.

The way i see the argument is: Kids did a chess program-> kids got better at schoolwork -> chess helps improve school work.

An alternative explanation could be that any program (chess, basketball, knitting, etc) helps them with school work. D basically provides that by saying there is an alternate way to improve school work-> a study session program.

I guess part of my question is are you saying that we could have gotten to C simply by recognizing ABDE don't reference the relevant subset? Or is there a way to tune D to undermine the conclusion or make it a correct answer?

Thanks

I know this is old, but adding here for anyone else struggling with this one. I also thought an alternate explanation might be that the kids saw academic improvement just by virtue of the fact that they participated in any supplemental program at all. D initially stood out to me as an example of "the effect still happens even when the supposed cause (the chess skills themselves) does not occur."

But D actually doesn't work because one could reasonably believe that a study session allows children to work on their real academic skills. It's not just that the sessions are part of a program, but it's what's actually happening in the sessions that is causing the improvement. D doesn't give us any reason to believe that just any old program would do.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Dancingbambarina,

Answer C is not implying that the cause and effect are reversed. Instead, it is offering a possible alternate cause for the effect (the increase in academic achievement levels).

It's important to carefully note what the study found, "most of the children who completed the program soon showed a significant increase in achievement levels in all of their schoolwork" (my emphasis). To simplify, you can think of "increase in achievement levels" as getting higher grades/GPA. In other words, what the study found was that most of the children completed the chess program and then started getting better grades after the program was over.

So it is not the case that the students already had high GPAs, or at least not as high as the grades they got after the course. If these students were already getting straight As before the course, then it wouldn't really be accurate to state that they had "a significant increase in achievement levels" after the course.

Instead, Answer C just provides an alternate cause for why the students may have improved their academic performance/grades; they just were motivated to study harder in order to get the GPA needed to be on the chess team.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi vga,

Excellent point!

The key is understanding that there may be (and likely are) many ways to increase academic performance (studying harder, getting a tutor, etc.), but just because a different group of students improved even more due to a different reason doesn't undermine that the students in the chess program may have improved academically due to the chess related skills mentioned in the argument.

[LaurenMerm]

The argument states:

Cause: chess course
Effect: achievement in school

I am confused why D does not weaken the argument. I understand that D is discussing a different population from that of the stimulus, but I thought that one of the ways to weaken an argument is to show that the effect still occurs when the cause is not present. D states that:

Cause: no chess course
Effect: achievement in school

Am I missing something?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Lauren,

You're right that generally one way to weaken a causal argument is to show the effect occurring without the cause.

However, there are a few important details in the conclusion of the argument that you want to consider. First, the actual cause given in the conclusion is "the reasoning power and spatial intuition exercised in chess-playing." In other words, it's technically those skills that caused the academic/intellectual improvement rather than simply the chess itself. (Yes, in this case it was the chess that developed those skills, but nowhere does the argument imply that chess is the only way to develop those skills.)

The other important detail to note in the conclusion are the words "contribute to." These words indicate a partial cause rather than single cause, which again allows for the possibility that other things could also contribute to academic/intellectual improvement.

In Answer D, the fact that other students were able to improve their academic/intellectual improvement without participating in the chess program does not indicate that they did not develop the reasoning power and spatial intuition skills mentioned in the argument's conclusion. Perhaps they developed those skills in the after-school study sessions? Perhaps they even play chess at home for fun? We just don't know.