CR Question 40, 41

40). A researcher discovered that people who have low levels of immune-system activity tend to score much lower on tests of mental health than do people with normal or high immune-system activity. The researcher concluded from this experiment that the immune system protects against mental illness as well as against physical disease.

The researcher's conclusion depends on which of the following assumptions?

A. High immune-system activity protects against mental illness better than normal immune-system activity does.

B. Mental illness is similar to physical disease in its effects on body systems.

C. People with high immune-system activity cannot develop mental illness.

D. Mental illness does not cause people's immune-system activity to decrease.

E. Psychological treatment of mental illness is not as effective as is medical treatment

41). Twenty years ago the Republic of Rosinia produced nearly 100 million tons of potatoes, but last year the harvest barely reached 60 million tons. Agricultural researchers, who have failed to develop new higher yielding strains of potatoes, are to blame for this decrease, since they have been concerned only with their own research and not with the needs of Rosinia.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

(A) Any current attempts by agricultural researchers to develop higher-yielding potato strains are futile.

(B) Strains of potatoes most commonly grown in Rosinia could not have produced the yields last year that they once did.

(C) Agricultural researchers often find concrete solutions to practical problems when investigating seemingly unrelated questions.

(D) Wide fluctuations in the size of the potato crop over a twenty-year period are not unusual.

(E) Agricultural research in Rosinia is funded by government grants.


Answers:

40). OA - D

Best approach for such questions is to negate the assumption and then look what effect this creates on the conclusion

Conclusion: immune system protects against mental illness
Negate the assumption: Mental illness causes people's immune-system activity to decrease.

Argument is shattered

Why not B:

Mental illness is similar to physical disease in its effects on body systems. - Assumption. Mental illness is similar to physical.

Now if you negate this assumption then the conclusion that "Protects against mental AND physical" falls ---- the similarity b/w the two diseases needs not be true for the immune system to work as claimed. The immune system can protect against two mutually exclusive diseases and still be effective. It's like saying that tylenol protects against headaches and depression. Are the two similar? Not at all. Yet, tylenol can still protect people against the two.

41). OA - B

Follow denial technique for assumption questions -

Negate : Strains of potatoes most commonly grown in Rosinia could have produced the yields last year that they once did. If this is true, then there could be some other reason for the reduced harvest. However, since the strains could not produce the same yields last year, the researchers are to blame for the poor quality of the strain