Despite a steady decrease in the average number of hours worked per person per week, the share of the population that...

Mazen on October 19, 2022

I am not a tutor; but I think I can help. we are looking for an answer that would weaken the causal relationship between the increased television viewership and the decline in newspaper readership, with the television being the cause and the decline in newspaper readership being the effect.

A is wrong because it could potentially strengthen given the primary source of information about current events is the TV. (However, I think that an LSAT expert would say that A is irrelevant - i.e., neither strengthens nor weakens - because we know nothing about whether the argument in the stimulus was based on a polling study or some other study).

C is wrong because we do not know time distribution between books and newspapers. According to C increased in both, but it could have increased in books while decreasing in newspaper to reallocate that time to TV watching: used to be 1/2 hour book reading and 1/2 hour newspaper reading, now it is 3 hours books reading; zero hours newspaper reading because people are getting their news from TV.

D is completely irrelevant; it discusses the impacts of TV watching and fails to address the causal relationship.

E is false because for it to weaken the argument would force us to add our assumption that the decrease in TV watching was translated into more time reading the newspaper. we cannot add our assumptions

I hope that an expert will correct me if I am wrong!

Mazen

Mazen on October 19, 2022

Oh: and B is correct and does weaken because it demonstrates the existence of the effect where the cause is absent. No tv viewership and yet a decrease in the newspaper readership suggesting an alternative cause to the decline; hence the weakening to the causal relationship.

Mazen