Question
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is a condition characterized by an inability to focus on any topic for a prolonged period of time, and is especially common among children five to ten years old. A recent study has shown that 85 percent of seven year old children with ADD watch, on average, more than five hours of television a day. It is therefore very likely that Ed, age seven, has ADD, since he watched roughly six hours of television a day. The argument above is flawed because it
Answer: Option B
:
B
The author's conclusion pops up at the end, when she states that Ed is likely to have ADD because he watches television a lot and is seven. They key piece of evidence is the recent study cited by the author that states that 85% of seven year olds with ADD watch more than five hours of television per day. The study thus discusses only the television-watching habits of seven year olds who have ADD. The author's conclusion is flawed because it makes a conclusion about a seven year old television watcher based on a study about seven year old television watchers with ADD. In other words, there's a scope shift between the evidence and the conclusion. The author errs in accepting the survey as relevant to Ed. (B) expresses this flaw most clearly; In order to make conclusions about Ed, and whether he might have ADD, the author must come up with evidence that pertains to Ed, since the original evidence does not. She needs a statistic that states the likelihood that a seven year old who watches more than five hours of TV a day would have ADD. The evidence provided sounds like that, and (B) captures the gist of the author's mistake. (B) wins.
is confusing, but the argument isn't really about degrees of causation. The author doesn't suggest that age and television-watchingcause a child to contract ADD, but that those factors generally appear with the disorder. (A) distorts the author's conclusion by suggesting that it says that Ed's television-watching has caused him to contract ADD, but the author never suggests this.
(C) Yes, the description of ADD symptoms is limited in the manner cited in (C), but that's not a problem.
Perhaps some doctors might disagree with the author's definition, but its validity is not the issue at
the heart of this argument. Rather, the argument's concerned with Ed's chances of having ADD based
on a particular study.
(D) directly contradicts the stimulus, were we learn that Ed does actually watch more than five hours of
television per day. You may also have noticed that the 15% figure is bogus - it's derived from the 85%
figure in the stimulus, but that figure refers to the percentage of children with ADD who watch more
than five hours of TV a day. Inferably, we can therefore say that 15% of children with ADD do not
watch more than five hours of TV a day, but we can't turn this into 15% of children in general who
don't watch more than five hours, as (D) attempts to do.
(E) again distorts the argument, which never suggests that television watching causes ADD. Since no
causality is mentioned, we can only assume that the data represents a correlation.
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:
B
The author's conclusion pops up at the end, when she states that Ed is likely to have ADD because he watches television a lot and is seven. They key piece of evidence is the recent study cited by the author that states that 85% of seven year olds with ADD watch more than five hours of television per day. The study thus discusses only the television-watching habits of seven year olds who have ADD. The author's conclusion is flawed because it makes a conclusion about a seven year old television watcher based on a study about seven year old television watchers with ADD. In other words, there's a scope shift between the evidence and the conclusion. The author errs in accepting the survey as relevant to Ed. (B) expresses this flaw most clearly; In order to make conclusions about Ed, and whether he might have ADD, the author must come up with evidence that pertains to Ed, since the original evidence does not. She needs a statistic that states the likelihood that a seven year old who watches more than five hours of TV a day would have ADD. The evidence provided sounds like that, and (B) captures the gist of the author's mistake. (B) wins.
is confusing, but the argument isn't really about degrees of causation. The author doesn't suggest that age and television-watchingcause a child to contract ADD, but that those factors generally appear with the disorder. (A) distorts the author's conclusion by suggesting that it says that Ed's television-watching has caused him to contract ADD, but the author never suggests this.
(C) Yes, the description of ADD symptoms is limited in the manner cited in (C), but that's not a problem.
Perhaps some doctors might disagree with the author's definition, but its validity is not the issue at
the heart of this argument. Rather, the argument's concerned with Ed's chances of having ADD based
on a particular study.
(D) directly contradicts the stimulus, were we learn that Ed does actually watch more than five hours of
television per day. You may also have noticed that the 15% figure is bogus - it's derived from the 85%
figure in the stimulus, but that figure refers to the percentage of children with ADD who watch more
than five hours of TV a day. Inferably, we can therefore say that 15% of children with ADD do not
watch more than five hours of TV a day, but we can't turn this into 15% of children in general who
don't watch more than five hours, as (D) attempts to do.
(E) again distorts the argument, which never suggests that television watching causes ADD. Since no
causality is mentioned, we can only assume that the data represents a correlation.
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