Which one of the following most completely and accurately describes the author's attitude toward Vernon's study?

shunhe on July 29, 2020

Hi @ielkind,

Thanks for the question! So remember, here we’re being asked for what most completely and accurately describes the author’s attitude toward Vernon’s study. (C) tells us that the author is appreciative of the effort the study required and neutral towards the study’s theories.

There’s two parts to this answer choice: being appreciative of the effort, and neutral towards the theories. Let’s look at the first part first. Where in the passage does the author appreciate the actual effort put in? We’re not explicitly told in the first place that the research took a lot of effort, nor does the author express appreciation towards the effort. That would be something like “wow, Vernon is really awesome for putting all this hard work in,” which doesn’t happen anywhere in the passage. So the first part of this answer choice isn’t supported by the passage, which is already enough to mark it as incorrect.

Now let’s look at the second part: is the author neutral towards the theories? Not really, we’re told that the author finds the discovery “especially compelling” in line 12, and that the study helped “dispel” a “myth” (in the first 4 lines). Basically, the author has a generally positive (one might say…receptive) attitude towards the research, not a neutral one. So the second part also mischaracterizes the author’s attitude! Neither of these parts is really supported by the passage, so (C) is incorrect.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.