Scientist: In testing whether a baby's babbling is a linguistic task or just random sounds, researchers videotaped th...

on September 29, 2020

Can you please explain why E is correcT?

I don't understand what the 2 explanations for the phenomena are here.

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Shunhe on September 29, 2020

Hi @ritagentile,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at what we’re told here by the stimulus. Researcher are videotaping baby mouths as they babble to see if the babbling is a linguistic task or just random sounds. They’ve found out that babbling babies open the right sides of their mouths wider than the left, and past studies have shown that during nonlinguistic vocalizations people generally open up their left side wider. So, the argument concludes, babbling turns out to be a linguistic task.

Now we’re asked for something that tells us how the scientist’s argument proceeds. Well, how can we abstract this? Looks like we have two possibilities: A or B. We’re trying to find out if A or B is happening. Turns out, we have some evidence that points against B. So, we conclude, it’s A. And if you take a look at (E), that matches up with this. There are two possible interpretations (linguistic task or just random sounds) of a phenomenon (baby babbling), and the argument provides evidence (the right side vs. left side stuff) in support of one interpretation (linguistic task) over the other (random sounds).

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