- According to critics described in the passage, an effect of focusing on objective actions was:
Answer: an unintentional encouragement of willful land theft.
The passage states critics argued the shift 'inadvertently incentivized deliberate land encroachment,' making 'willful land theft' in (D) an accurate paraphrase. (B) is a reversal: the passage explicitly says the shift helped clear clouded titles, meaning clouded titles decreased rather than increased. (E) names the problem the good-faith requirement itself caused — inconsistent rulings — not an effect of shifting to objective standards.
- According to the passage, the desiccation of mycorrhizal fungal networks is an effect of:
Answer: the starthistle's taproot lowering the localized water table.
The passage states explicitly that 'the taproot's extraction of deep-layer moisture... lowers the localized water table just enough to desiccate the symbiotic mycorrhizal fungal networks.' (A) describes canopy shading, which displaces competitors through sunlight competition rather than causing fungal desiccation. (E) names the mechanism that initial ecological models incorrectly identified as primary — the passage explicitly says this older model was wrong.
- According to the passage, why does transgenerational epigenetic inheritance occur in only some descendants of famine survivors rather than all of them?
Answer: Most epigenetic tags are actively removed during embryonic development, leaving only a small subset to be transmitted.
The passage establishes that while most epigenetic tags are stripped away during embryonic development, 'a small subset of these markers manages to escape this clearing process,' making transgenerational inheritance the exception. (A) captures this directly. (B) misapplies Mendelian genetics: the passage introduces epigenetics precisely because it complicates the Mendelian premise — Mendelian genetics is the paradigm being challenged, not the explanation for why inheritance is limited. (D) contradicts an explicit statement: methylation 'does not alter the underlying DNA sequence.'
- According to the abiotic model described in the passage, the presence of phosphine in the upper atmosphere of Venus is caused by:
Answer: deep-mantle volcanism combined with massive convective updrafts.
The second paragraph outlines the abiotic model: 'deep-mantle volcanism could dredge up heavy phosphorus... which is then forced into the upper atmosphere by massive, localized convective updrafts where it reacts to form phosphine.' Both components are required. (B) describes the biological hypothesis the abiotic model is offered as an alternative to. (D) is a precise trap: the passage states the required kinetic energy 'far exceeds the output of any currently observed volcanic activity' — current volcanic output is cited as insufficient, not as the proposed cause.
- The passage indicates that having distinct mandatory terms for light blue and dark blue has which of the following effects on Russian speakers?
Answer: It enables them to visually discriminate between certain shades of blue more rapidly than English speakers can.
The second paragraph explicitly states that Russian speakers are 'significantly faster at visually discriminating between shades of blue that cross this linguistic boundary than English speakers are,' which (C) paraphrases directly. (A) directly contradicts the passage's central conclusion: 'language does not biologically dictate perception,' ruling out any permanent physiological alteration. (E) misreads the scope — the effect is limited to distinctions that are 'explicitly lexically encoded,' not all visual distinctions, and the process is described as unconscious rather than forced.
- According to the passage, the primary cause of the epistolary novel's decline in the nineteenth century was:
Answer: the development and popularization of the omniscient third-person narrative style.
The second paragraph states directly: 'This obsolescence was primarily caused by the emergence and refinement of the omniscient third-person narrative technique.' (D) is an exact paraphrase. (E) is a concept-swap trap: the passage attributes 'contrived, cumbersome mechanics' to the epistolary form and 'far greater structural flexibility' to the omniscient narrator — students who conflate the two will select it. (B) directly contradicts the passage, which identifies the epistolary form's advantage as providing 'unfiltered emotional reactions.'
- The passage indicates that 'slow slip' events cause which of the following?
Answer: Temporary elevations in the pressure of subterranean water reservoirs.
The final sentence states slow slip events cause 'localized, transient increases in the pressure of deep underground aquifers.' (B) is a precise synonymous paraphrase: 'temporary elevations' for 'transient increases' and 'subterranean water reservoirs' for 'deep underground aquifers.' (C) is a direct contradiction — the passage explicitly states these events 'do not generate seismic waves detectable by humans.' (A) describes completely locked faults, which is the opposite behavior from the intermittent unlocking that characterizes slow slip events.
- According to the passage, 'housing misallocation' is best illustrated by:
Answer: tenants remaining in apartments that exceed their space requirements to avoid higher market-rate rents.
The second paragraph defines housing misallocation through the example of empty nesters who remain in family-sized apartments 'simply because moving to a smaller, market-rate unit would dramatically increase their monthly living expenses.' (D) paraphrases this mechanism precisely. (B) describes developer capital redirection — a cause of the overall supply shortage, which is a distinct phenomenon from the misallocation the question asks about. (E) names the broader consequence of rent control on supply, which is the upstream cause of the shortage, not the mechanism of misallocation itself.
- The passage indicates that the high specificity of bacteriophages results in which of the following effects?
Answer: A delay in administering treatment due to the necessity of finding an exact bacterial match.
Because phages target only a single bacterial strain, clinicians must 'culture the patient's specific bacterial isolate and screen it against a massive library of phages to find an exact match, a process that can delay critical treatment by several days.' (C) paraphrases this precisely. (B) describes an effect of traditional antibiotics — bacteria evolving resistance — not an effect of phage specificity. (D) is the opposite of what the passage states; regulatory approval is described as a major bottleneck, not an immediate process.
- The passage indicates that evidence of opinio juris serves to:
Answer: demonstrate that a state's consistent behavior is motivated by a perceived legal obligation rather than diplomatic courtesy.
The first paragraph defines opinio juris as requiring states to act 'out of a subjective belief that the practice is mandated by international law' rather than 'mere political expediency or diplomatic courtesy.' (B) synthesizes both halves of this definition. (A) describes the persistent objector doctrine from the second paragraph — a separate mechanism that exempts states from norms, not a function of opinio juris evidence. (C) conflates opinio juris with jus cogens; the passage treats them as distinct concepts.
- According to the passage, what does skeletal evidence from early agrarian settlements reveal?
Answer: early agrarian populations exhibited significantly worse physiological health than their hunter-gatherer predecessors.
The passage introduces skeletal evidence to support the claim that agriculture 'caused a stark deterioration in individual physiological health,' citing dental caries, vitamin deficiencies, and stunted bone growth in early agrarian populations 'compared to the robust skeletal remains of their hunter-gatherer immediate predecessors.' (A) and (C) are both true statements from elsewhere in the passage — megafauna extinction and caloric yield — but neither is what the skeletal evidence addresses. (E) reverses the comparison: it is agrarian populations, not hunter-gatherers, who showed the deficiencies described.
- According to the passage, the increased susceptibility to obesity in the grandchildren of famine survivors is directly caused by:
Answer: the survival of specific chemical tags that regulate gene expression during embryonic development.
Because 'a small subset of these markers manages to escape this clearing process,' the inherited instruction to hoard calories has 'the paradoxical effect of drastically increasing the grandchildren's susceptibility to metabolic syndromes and obesity.' The surviving tags are the proximate cause. (A) directly contradicts the passage, which states methylation 'does not alter the underlying DNA sequence.' (B) misrepresents the mechanism: the clearing process does not completely fail — the passage says the vast majority of tags are removed, with only a subset escaping.
- According to the passage, what did the anomalous GPS data first demonstrate about fault behavior?
Answer: that faults can intermittently unlock and slide gradually over a period of weeks or months.
The passage states the 'GPS anomalies provided the first evidence that faults can intermittently unlock and slide over a period of weeks or months,' the defining characteristic of slow slip events. (E) is a precise distractor: the passage says the landmass above the subduction zone reverses trajectory, not the subducting plate itself — a substitution that will catch students who skim the relevant sentence. (D) names an effect of slow slip events rather than what the GPS data demonstrated about fault behavior.
- According to the textualists described in the passage, relying on legislative history has which of the following effects?
Answer: It enables judges to select historical evidence that supports their personal policy preferences.
The second paragraph states the textualist argument explicitly: relying on legislative history 'allows judges to essentially cherry-pick quotes from a voluminous historical record to justify their own preferred policy outcomes.' (E) is a precise paraphrase. (C) describes the purposivist goal — understanding the societal problem the legislature sought to remedy — making it a strong attribution trap for students who lose track of which school of thought the question asks about. (A) is the direct opposite of the textualist claim; they argue legislative history undermines, rather than strengthens, fidelity to enacted text.
- According to the passage, the primary cause for American courts abandoning the 'good-faith' requirement was that:
Answer: assessing a trespasser's subjective intent led to prolonged legal disputes and unpredictable outcomes.
The second paragraph states directly: 'Judges found that inquiring into a trespasser's subjective state of mind generated wildly inconsistent rulings and protracted litigation,' an exact match for (C). (E) is a carefully constructed trap: critics argued that abandoning the requirement incentivized encroachment, but that is an effect of the change, not the reason for it. (A) accurately describes the purpose of the good-faith requirement before it was abandoned, not the reason for abandoning it.
- According to the passage, what did researchers find when Russian speakers performed timed categorization tasks?
Answer: language can train the brain to prioritize certain lexically encoded visual distinctions.
The timed tasks showed Russian speakers were faster at discriminating lexically bounded blue shades, supporting the conclusion that language 'trains the brain to unconsciously prioritize and accelerate visual distinctions that are explicitly lexically encoded.' (D) captures this finding. (A) describes the finding from the first paragraph — the universality of physiological color perception — which was demonstrated by cognitive psychologists, not by the timed tasks. (B) restates the strong Whorfian hypothesis, which the passage says was discredited.
- According to the passage, the widespread crop failures in the Eastern Mediterranean were directly caused by:
Answer: a centuries-long megadrought.
The passage states the 'climatic shift would have caused widespread crop failures,' and the megadrought is the climatic shift in question. (A) is a classic reversal trap: the passage explicitly frames the Sea Peoples as a secondary effect of the agricultural collapse, not its cause. (C) names a consequence of the crop failures — localized rebellions — rather than the cause of those failures.
- The author indicates that a tightened bid-ask spread is an effect of:
Answer: the constant stream of buy and sell offers provided by automated programs.
The first paragraph traces a direct causal chain: HFT firms 'providing a constant stream of buy and sell offers'... 'tightens the bid-ask spread.' (A) describes what happens during macroeconomic stress, which the second paragraph links to flash crashes, not spread-tightening. (C), (D), and (E) all describe components of the phantom liquidity phenomenon in the second paragraph — none are connected to the narrowing of the spread.
- According to the legal scholars mentioned in the passage, the fact that a corporation is an 'independent legal entity' has which of the following effects on corporate governance?
Answer: It provides directors the flexibility to consider the interests of non-shareholder stakeholders.
The scholars argue that because the corporation is an independent legal entity, 'directors actually owe their fiduciary duties to the corporation as a whole, not exclusively to the shareholders,' implying 'the legal leeway to balance shareholder returns against the interests of other stakeholders.' (A) accurately describes the shareholder primacy doctrine these scholars are challenging — students who lose track of whose argument is being described will select it. (B) contradicts the passage, which explicitly states that shareholders own shares entitling them to rights such as dividends.
- According to the passage, an effect of a customary norm ascending to the status of jus cogens is that it:
Answer: invalidates the exemption previously held by a state that consistently opposed the norm's formation.
The passage states: 'this exemption is entirely nullified if the norm in question ascends to the status of jus cogens.' (C) accurately paraphrases 'nullified' as 'invalidates' and 'exemption' as the persistent objector protection. (D) is a reversal trap: jus cogens universally binds all states to norms such as the prohibition of torture — it does the opposite of permitting objection to them. (A) conflates jus cogens with the opinio juris requirement from the first paragraph, which governs ordinary customary norm formation, not elevation to peremptory status.
