The availability of television reduces the amount of reading children do. When television is made unavailable, a near...

Irina on October 8, 2019

@ali,

The basic idea in the stimulus is that the availability of television is correlated with the amount of reading -when television is available, the amount of reading goes down, and when it is unavailable, it goes up.

We are looking for a similar cause and effect pattern of reasoning in one of the answer choices.

(A) has a similar pattern, demonstrating a correlation between money supply and interest rates. Money supply (cause) -> interest rates (effect).

Let's briefly look at the incorrect answer choices:

(B) Consumption of candy -> appetite

This answer choice switches from candy -> appetite correlation to healthy meals -> less candy in its conclusion, thus reversing the cause and effect relationship - an element absent from the stimulus.

(C) Industrial pollution -> CO2 -> global warming

This chain involves an intermediate variable instead of two variables that directly correlate with each other.

(D) Other factors -> voting behavior

This answer choice provides how various other factors - confidence/ facial expression affect voting behavior, again this is not a correlation between two variables as in the stimulus.

(E) Adults appear to read less

This answer choice involves no cause-and-effect relationship, in fact, it is more of a bidirectional relationship - the more time one spends on other activities - the less one reads, the less one reads- the more time one spends on other activities.