LSAT 121 – Section 4 – Question 25

LSAT 121 - Section 4 - Question 25

December 2005

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Ask a tutor

Target time: 1:21

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT121 S4 Q25
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Sampling +Smpl
A
24%
162
B
43%
167
C
17%
162
D
4%
156
E
12%
159
157
167
176
 +Hardest 146.544 +SubsectionMedium

Therapist: In a recent study, researchers measured how quickly 60 different psychological problems waned as a large, diverse sample of people underwent weekly behavioral therapy sessions. About 75 percent of the 60 problems consistently cleared up within 50 weeks of therapy. This shows that 50 weekly behavioral therapy sessions are all that most people need.

Summarize Argument
The author concludes that most people only need 50 weekly behavioral therapy session in order to clear up the psychological problems they have. This is based on a study in which researchers measured how quickly 60 different psych. problems cleared up among a sample of people who had weekly therapy sessions. 75% of the 60 problems cleared up within 50 weeks.

Identify and Describe Flaw
The author overlooks the possibility that most people have a psych problem that takes longer than 50 weeks to clear up. The fact 45 out of 60 types of psych. problems clear up in 50 weeks doesn’t tell us whether most people with a psych. problem have one of those 45 problems. Most might have one of the 15/60 that takes longer than 50 weeks.

A
takes for granted that there are no psychological problems that usually take significantly longer to clear up than the 60 psychological problems studied
The author doesn’t assume that there’s no problem that takes longer to clear up than the 60 studied. She only needs to assume that if those problems exist, most people do not have those longer-to-clear-up problems.
B
fails to address the possibility that any given one of the 60 psychological problems studied might afflict most people
The author assumed that most people have one of the 45 problems that cleared up within 50 weeks. But this overlooks that most people might have one of the 15 problems that took longer to clear up.
C
takes for granted that no one suffers from more than one of the 60 psychological problems studied
Even if you think having multiple problems could require more than 50 weeks to clear up, the author doesn’t have to assume “no one” has more than one problem. She would only need to assume that most people don’t have more than one problem.
D
fails to address the possibility that some forms of therapy have never been proven to be effective as treatments for psychological problems
We know that certain problems cleared up with weekly behavioral therapy sessions. So, there’s evidence that behavioral therapy works. Also, the author doesn’t conclude that any kind of therapy will be enough for most people; she specifies behavioral therapy.
E
takes for granted that the sample of people studied did not have significantly more psychological problems, on average, than the population as a whole
The study concerns the time required for various psychological problems to clear up. Whether the sample had more problems than average is irrelevant, because we can still measure the clear-up rate of the problems present in the sample.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 121 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply