Scientist: My research indicates that children who engage in impulsive behavior similar to adult thrill–seeking beha...

SamA on April 24, 2020

Hello @jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com,

There are a couple of problems with answer choice D. First, it is not very specific. There may be many behavioral tendencies that first appear in adulthood, but we cannot say that this has anything to do with impulsive, thrill-seeking behavior.

Second, even if thrill-seeking did suddenly appear in adulthood, I don't think it would affect the argument. The gene variant could still exist in those people. In short, D has no effect on the correlation on which the conclusion is based.

Anna20 on July 24, 2020

Please could you further explain the other answer choices - not sure I am clear on the causation / correlation flaw here? I eliminated B because it seems like such a broad answer choice that it seemed out of scope. Can you equate thrill-seeking behaviour with impulsiveness?

Thanks so much!!

Anna20 on February 2, 2021

Hi there - I am unfortunately still struggling with this question, grateful if I could follow up on the above - why would you choose B? Why is A incorrect here? Thank you! :)

MikeM on May 5, 2021

Hello. I am not an instructor, but maybe my understanding can help.

I was also between A and B, and ultimately chose A because I got the two types of behavior mixed up, which is why A is wrong. A reads: "Many impulsive adults are not unusually sensitive to dopamine." The problem with this answer is that the stimulus said nothing about "impulsive adults", only making a connection between impulsive children and thrill-seeking adults.

B seems strange to me as well, since it seems to attack the premises. However, if you could not differentiate impulsive behavior from other types of behavior, then it is not impulsivity that the researcher is using to single out these kids, but something else, which may be irrelevant to thrill-seeking in adults.