Reading Comprehension · Social Science
PrepTest 155 · Section 3 · Passage 4
Questions 23–27
Before you start
Open PrepTest 155, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 23–27, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- Passage A, P1: introduces an influential older claim and dismisses it as unsupported
- Passage A, P2: pinpoints the older claim's main mistake and offers a revised view from newer research, with a personal example
- Passage A, P3: adds a further effect and supports it with a study comparing two groups
- Passage B, P1: reports studies of a group lacking a certain tool and finds they still have a rough version of the ability
- Passage B, P2: says this supports one view, then adds a complication and ends by listing three possible explanations without choosing
Step 2 · The kid passage
Do Maps Shape How We Find Our Way?
Passage A
Years ago, a counselor named Hal convinced a whole summer of campers that the map you grow up with limits where you can imagine going. Kids raised on different maps, he said, can never share a trail. Hal never had a shred of proof.
Hal's real mistake was thinking a map stops you from picturing places. New studies say a map's power lies in what it makes you notice. My town's map marks every bench, so I always think about benches.
Maps can also color our feelings. Pine Town's map paints the quarry red; River Town's paints it green. Pine Town kids called the quarry scary; River Town kids called it peaceful. For the duck pond, colored the other way, the feelings flipped.
Passage B
Studies of a hiking party from Camp Willow, where maps are never used, shed light on how maps shape direction sense. These campers have loose words for near and far, but no exact distance words. Yet when asked to point toward the lake or tell which of two trails is longer, they show a built-in, rough sense of distance.
By showing that map-free campers have a rough distance sense comparable to map users', these studies suggest the basic sense does not come from maps. But there is more. Map users insist a 300-step trail is exactly 300 steps; the Willow campers happily matched it to a 400-step one. So learning maps either creates a sense of exact distance, helps it grow, or simply directs attention to it.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Watchless Baker
A bakery owner sued her helper for arriving late. The helper owned no watch. Her lawyer called two witnesses. The first, a cheerful columnist, said, "People once claimed that without a watch you cannot think about time at all. Nonsense, never proven. A watch just makes you notice minutes." The second, a careful researcher, spoke slowly. "I studied a village with no clocks. The villagers knew roughly when noon came and which errand took longer. But they did not care whether a task took forty minutes or fifty." Mr. Whitfield, for the owner, smiled. "So she had a sense of time without a watch." "A rough one," said the researcher. "Exactness may come with the watch." The judge split the difference: late, but forgiven.