Normal full-term babies are all born with certain instinctive reflexes that disappear by the age of two months. Becau...
BrookeMagAugust 8, 2019
Answer Options
Hi! For questions like this when you have to go through each of the answer choices, do you recommend starting with the last answer option (E) because the LSAT makers know you're usually going to start with answer choice (A)? Or does this approach, in regards to the answer choice order, not really matter? Thanks for the help!
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I would just start with (A) and go down. Historically, each answer choice is the correct answer choice about 20% of the time, so starting with (E) confers no benefit. Thus, just start with (A) and go from there to keep things simple.
Now, let's take a look at the question.
We can diagram the stimulus:
normal full-term babies - >disappeared reflexes
reflexes didn't disappear - >not normal full-term baby
This argument is using the contrapositive of the original statement to conclude that the baby isn't a normal full-term baby. This is a valid argument structure.
If A, then B
not B, therefore not A
(D) says, "Because opossums have abdominal pouches and this animal lacks any such pouch, this animal is not an opossum."
This can be diagrammed as
O - AP
/AP - >/O
This argument matches the contrapositive format of the one in the stimulus, so it's the correct answer choice.
