SAT支持削弱题

Black beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are a nutritionally dense food, but they are difficult to digest in part because of their high levels of soluble fiber and compounds like raffinose. They also contain antinutrients like tannins and trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with the body’s ability to extract nutrients from foods. In a research article, Marisela Granito and Glenda Álvarez from Simón Bolívar University in Venezuela claim that inducing fermentation of black beans using lactic acid bacteria improves the digestibility of the beans and makes them more nutritious.

Which finding from Granito and Álvarez’s research, if true, would most directly support their claim?

• A) When cooked, fermented beans contained significantly more trypsin inhibitors and tannins but significantly less soluble fiber and raffinose than nonfermented beans.

• B) Fermented beans contained significantly less soluble fiber and raffinose than nonfermented beans, and when cooked, the fermented beans also displayed a significant reduction in trypsin inhibitors and tannins.

• C) When the fermented beans were analyzed, they were found to contain two microorganisms, Lactobacillus casei and Lactobacillus plantarum, that are theorized to increase the amount of nitrogen absorbed by the gut after eating beans.

• D) Both fermented and nonfermented black beans contained significantly fewer trypsin inhibitors and tannins after being cooked at high pressure.

Answer explanation

当面对支持削弱题时，核心句子一定是带有观点的句子。

argue that

suggest that

indicate that

conclude that...

Born in 1891 to a Quechua-speaking family in the Andes Mountains of Peru, Martín Chambi is today considered to be one of the most renowned figures of Latin American photography. In a paper for an art history class, a student claims that Chambi’s photographs have considerable ethnographic value—in his work, Chambi was able to capture diverse elements of Peruvian society, representing his subjects with both dignity and authenticity.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the student’s claim?

• A) Chambi took many commissioned portraits of wealthy Peruvians, but he also produced hundreds of images carefully documenting the peoples, sites, and customs of Indigenous communities of the Andes.

• B) Chambi’s photographs demonstrate a high level of technical skill, as seen in his strategic use of illumination to create dramatic light and shadow contrasts.

• C) During his lifetime, Chambi was known and celebrated both within and outside his native Peru, as his work was published in places like Argentina, Spain, and Mexico.

•  D) Some of the peoples and places Chambi photographed had long been popular subjects for Peruvian photographers.

In the twentieth century, ethnographers made a concerted effort to collect Mexican American folklore, but they did not always agree about that folklore’s origins. Scholars such as Aurelio Espinosa claimed that Mexican American folklore derived largely from the folklore of Spain, which ruled Mexico and what is now the southwestern United States from the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Scholars such as Américo Paredes, by contrast, argued that while some Spanish influence is undeniable, Mexican American folklore is mainly the product of the ongoing interactions of various cultures in Mexico and the United States.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Paredes’s argument?

• A)  The folklore that the ethnographers collected included several songs written in the form of a décima, a type of poem originating in late sixteenth- century Spain.

• B)  Much of the folklore that the ethnographers collected had similar elements from region to region.

• C)  Most of the folklore that the ethnographers collected was previously unknown to scholars.

• D)  Most of the folklore that the ethnographers collected consisted of corridos—ballads about history and social life—of a clearly recent origin.

Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt have argued that experiencing awe—a sensation of reverence and wonder typically brought on by perceiving something grand or powerful—can enable us to feel more connected to others and thereby inspire us to act more altruistically. Keltner, along with Paul K. Piff, Pia Dietze, and colleagues, claims to have found evidence for this effect in a recent study where participants were asked to either gaze up at exceptionally tall trees in a nearby grove (reported to be a universally awe-inspiring experience) or stare at the exterior of a nearby, nondescript building. After one minute, an experimenter deliberately spilled a box of pens nearby.

Which finding from the researchers’ study, if true, would most strongly support their claim?

• A)  Participants who had been looking at the trees helped the experimenter pick up significantly more pens than did participants who had been looking at the building.

• B)  Participants who helped the experimenter pick up the pens used a greater number of positive words to describe the trees and the building in a postexperiment survey than did participants who did not help the experimenter.

• C)  Participants who did not help the experimenter pick up the pens were significantly more likely to report having experienced a feeling of awe, regardless of whether they looked at the building or the trees.

• D)  Participants who had been looking at the building were significantly more likely to notice that the experimenter had dropped the pens than were participants who had been looking at the trees.

When digging for clams, their primary food, sea otters damage the roots of eelgrass plants growing on the seafloor. Near Vancouver Island in Canada, the otter population is large and well established, yet the eelgrass meadows are healthier than those found elsewhere off Canada’s coast. To explain this, conservation scientist Erin Foster and colleagues compared the Vancouver Island meadows to meadows where otters are absent or were reintroduced only recently. Finding that the Vancouver Island meadows have a more diverse gene pool than the others do, Foster hypothesized that damage to eelgrass roots increases the plant’s rate of sexual reproduction; this, in turn, boosts genetic diversity, which benefits the meadow’s health overall.

Which finding, if true, would most directly undermine Foster’s hypothesis?

• A)  At some sites in the study, eelgrass meadows are found near otter populations that are small and have only recently been reintroduced.

• B)  At several sites not included in the study, there are large, well-established sea otter populations but no eelgrass meadows.

• C)  At several sites not included in the study, eelgrass meadows’ health correlates negatively with the length of residence and size of otter populations.

• D)  At some sites in the study, the health of plants unrelated to eelgrass correlates negatively with the length of residence and size of otter populations.

Political scientists who favor the traditional view of voter behavior claim that voting in an election does not change a voter’s attitude toward the candidates in that election. Focusing on each US presidential election from 1976 to 1996, Ebonya Washington and Sendhil Mullainathan tested this claim by distinguishing between subjects

who had just become old enough to vote (around half of whom actually voted) and otherwise similar subjects who were slightly too young to vote (and thus none of whom voted). Washington and Mullainathan compared the attitudes of the groups of subjects toward the winning candidate two years after each election.

Which finding from Washington and Mullainathan’s study, if true, would most directly weaken the claim made by people who favor the traditional view of voter behavior?

• A) Subjects’ attitudes toward the winning candidate two years after a given election were strongly predicted by subjects’ general political orientation, regardless of whether subjects were old enough to vote at the time of the election.

• B) Subjects who were not old enough to vote in a given election held significantly more positive attitudes towards the winning candidate two years later than they held at the time of the election.

• C) Subjects who voted in a given election held significantly more polarized attitudes toward the winning candidate two years later than did subjects who were not old enough to vote in that election.

• D) Two years after a given election, subjects who voted and subjects who were not old enough to vote were significantly more likely to express negative attitudes than positive attitudes toward the winning candidate in that election.