Inferences

Inferences
SAT test preparation

Adaptations to cold temperatures have high metabolic costs. It is expensive, in terms of energy use, for land plants and animals to withstand very cold temperatures, and it gets more expensive the colder it gets, which means that the lower the air temperature, the fewer species have evolved to survive it. This factor, in conjunction with the decline in air temperature with increasing elevation, explains the distribution of species diversity in mountain ecosystems: you find fewer species high up a mountain than at the mountain’s base because ______ Which choice most logically completes the text?

a)there are relatively few environments hospitable to species that are adapted to live in low air temperatures.
b)there are relatively few species with the adaptations necessary to tolerate the temperatures at high elevations.
c)adaptations that allow plants and animals to survive in rocky environments are metabolically costly.
d)some mountain environments are at elevations so high that no plants or animals can survive them.

How should we think about inferences questions?

Inference questions focus on how we connect information and ideas to build arguments.
Some SAT prep students find it useful to analyze the components of an argument, which can be divided into two main parts: premises and conclusions.

Premises are the facts that form the foundation of the argument. When properly connected, they provide solid evidence to support the conclusion. The conclusion, in turn, is the core of the argument—the main claim the author aims to prove.

is the core of the argument—the main claim the author aims to prove.

The conclusion

are the facts that form the foundation of the argument. When properly connected, they provide solid evidence to support the conclusion.

Premises

Premises and the Conclusion

Poll

Distinguishing between premises and conclusions is the only way to answer inferences questions?

• Agree

• Disagree

Reorder

How to approach inferences questions?

• Separate the text into bullet points

• Examine the argument

• Explore the choices

• Select the choice that strengthens the argument

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​Separate the text into bullet points

Everything you need to answer an inference question is found within the passage. To identify the correct answer, read carefully and pay close attention to the details provided.

A helpful strategy is to break down each idea in the passage into bullet points. This step-by-step outline will clarify the argument’s flow and make it easier to spot any gaps or missing connections.

Examine the argument

Examine each piece of information in the passage and think about how they connect. Do they build toward something? What ties them together?

Every inference question is like a mystery, and all the clues you need are right there. Your job is to act like a detective and piece them together!

Explore the choices

Review the answer choices one by one, asking yourself if each one logically completes the argument in the passage.

Be cautious of choices that expand the discussion or introduce ideas not directly mentioned in the passage. Inference passages typically present focused arguments, so eliminate any options that deviate from or contradict the points made in the text

Select the choice that strengthens the argument

The correct choice should fit naturally with the information in the passage. Moreover, when combined with the rest of the text, it should make the argument clearer and more convincing. Once you identify a choice that does this, you can select it with confidence!

Multiple Choice

Adaptations to cold temperatures have high metabolic costs. It is expensive, in terms of energy use, for land plants and animals to withstand very cold temperatures, and it gets more expensive the colder it gets, which means that the lower the air temperature, the fewer species have evolved to survive it. This factor, in conjunction with the decline in air temperature with increasing elevation, explains the distribution of species diversity in mountain ecosystems: you find fewer species high up a mountain than at the mountain’s base because ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• there are relatively few environments hospitable to species that are adapted to live in low air temperatures.

• there are relatively few species with the adaptations necessary to tolerate the temperatures at high elevations.

• adaptations that allow plants and animals to survive in rocky environments are metabolically costly.

• some mountain environments are at elevations so high that no plants or animals can survive them.

Multiple Choice

Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to encoding information in long-term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep for hours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it became so widespread in the animal kingdom. These scientists therefore imply that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• it is more important to understand how widespread prolonged deep sleep is than to understand its function.

• prolonged deep sleep is likely advantageous in ways that have yet to be discovered.

• many traits that provide significant benefits for an animal also likely pose risks to that animal.

• most traits perform functions that are hard to understand from an evolutionary standpoint.

Multiple Choice

Companies whose products are similar to competing products often pursue a marketing strategy of brand differentiation, trying to get consumers to associate their brand with unique attributes (e.g., to think of their brand of rice as the healthy brand, when in fact there is little difference among brands of the same type of rice). Jaywant Singh and Francesca Dall’Olmo Riley investigated consumer perceptions of such products, finding that consumers view competing brands as having largely the same attributes and that any differences in the strength of consumers’ associations of brands with attributes are explained by differences in market share—the more popular a brand is, the stronger people’s associations with it are—suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• consumers tend to perceive products with high market share more positively than they perceive products with low market share.

• marketing aimed at brand differentiation influences consumers’ perceptions of branded products but not consumers’ purchasing behavior.

• marketing efforts focused on brand differentiation do not have much effect on consumers’ perceptions of branded products’ attributes.

• differences in consumers’ perceptions of products’ attributes are less influenced by brand differentiation than by actual differences between products.