LSAT 113 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q6

LR Question 6 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: In a study, infant monkeys given a choice between two surrogate…

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

FACTS:

1. Monkeys chose suede over wire, when both suede and wire had milk.
2. And milk over suede, when the suede had no milk.

ANALYSIS: The experiments offer two clear comparisons. Suede and wire are compared, and suede wins. But when wire has milk and suede doesn’t, milk wins.

We have no idea how effective suede and milk are as substitutes for the monkeys’ mothers.

We can only make a conclusion about the two situations that were directly compared.

___________

1. Actually, the monkeys chose food over suede.
2. We have no evidence for this. The researchers didn’t test fur.
3. This wasn’t tested. The comparison was only between suede/wire and then wire + food vs. suede + no food.
4. The study did not test how convincing the substitutes were compared to the infants’ mothers.
5. CORRECT. Assuming suede is warm and comfortable, the monkeys preferred food. The two tests establish that they prefer suede over wire, unless only the wire has food.