The question stem asks us to identify which of the outlined principles underlies the argument in Passage B but NOT in Passage A.
Let's start by outlining the arguments in both passages.
Passage A starts by telling us about Whorf who argued that our mother tongue restricts our cognitive abilities. In particular, Whorf argued that Hopi and English "impose[d] different pictures of reality on their speakers, impeding mutual understanding."
The author argues that Whorf's main mistake was to assume that our mother tongue prevents us from thinking certain thoughts. New research has shown that the impact is actually that our mother tongue influences our thoughts by obliging us to think about certain things e.g. gendering our neighbours.
Psychologists in the 1990s compared the feelings and associations that German speakers had about certain inanimate objects which were gendered differently in Spanish and vice versa e.g. a bridge is feminine in German whereas it is masculine in Spanish. They found that grammatical gender impacted how the speakers of the different languages would describe the objects.
Passage B begins by highlighting studies involving subjects who spoke two languages from the Brazilian Amazonia. The author tells us that these guides help demonstrate the role of language in developing numerical reasoning.
The subjects of these studies have consistent, unambiguous words for 1 and 2 and more loosely used words for 3 and 4; however, the author suggests that these subjects may not have "true number words at all." The author also notes that these subjects do not overtly count; however, when they were tested on various numerical tasks, they showed an innate and imprecise nonverbal concept of number.
The author argues that these studies "support a non-Whorfian, language-independent view of the origins of our concept of number."
These "innumerate subjects" had a sort of indifference to exact numerical equality that numerate subjects did not. Therefore, the author concludes that learning number words either:
(A) Creates a concept of exact numerical equality (a strong Whorfian hypothesis); (B) Mediates the expansion of a concept of exact numerical equality (a weaker Whorfian hypothesis); or (C) Directs attention to said concept (a non-Whorfian hypothesis)
Answer choice (B) is correct because we know that innumerate subjects possess an innate imprecise nonverbal concept of number but may not actually have true number words. Therefore, even though their language lacks an expression for number, they still have a concept of number, suggests that this concept was not created by language.
Answer choice (A) is incorrect because it underlies the argument in Passage A.
Answer choice (C) is incorrect because neither passage discusses the ability of a speaker to learn another language, or lack thereof.
Answer choice (D) is incorrect because it is contradicted by the author's conclusion in Passage B.
Finally, answer choice (E) is incorrect because it is contradicted by Passage A and does not underlie Passage B.
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