SAT: Reading & Writing: Information and Ideas - Command of Evidence (ROUGHT DRAFT)

In the United States, firms often seek incentives from municipal governments to expand to those municipalities. A team of political scientists hypothesized that municipalities are much more likely to respond to firms and offer incentives if expansions can be announced in time to benefit local elected officials than if they can’t. The team contacted officials in thousands of municipalities, inquiring about incentives for a firm looking to expand and indicating that the firm would announce its expansion on a date either just before or just after the next election.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that weaken the team’s hypothesis?

Although many transposons, DNA sequences that move within an organism’s genome through shuffling or duplication, have become corrupted and inactive over time, those from the long interspersed nuclear elements (LINE) family appear to remain active in the genomes of some species. In humans, they are functionally important within the hippocampus, a brain structure that supports complex cognitive processes. When the results of molecular analysis of two species of octopus—an animal known for its intelligence—were announced in 2022, the confirmation of a LINE transposon in Octopus vulgaris and Octopus bimaculoides genomes prompted researchers to hypothesize that that transposon family is tied to a species’ capacity for advanced cognition.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ hypothesis?

Jean-Bernard Caron and colleagues recently discovered a cache of jellyfish fossils in the Burgess Shale, a site in the Canadian Rockies that is rich in fossils from the Cambrian period (over 500 million years ago). Caron and colleagues claim that these are the oldest jellyfish fossils ever discovered. In the past twenty years, two sites in China and the United States have yielded fossils of a similar age that some experts believe are most likely jellyfish due to their shapes and the appearance of projecting tentacles. But Caron and colleagues argue that the apparent tentacles are in fact the comb rows of ctenophores, gelatinous animals that are only distantly related to jellyfish.

Which statement, if true, would most directly weaken the claim by Caron and colleagues about the fossils found in China and the United States?

Sample of Food Items from Gemini Mission

Menus

To make sure they got the nutrition they needed while in space, the astronauts of NASA's Gemini missions were given menus for three meals a day (meals A, B, and C) on a four-day rotating schedule. Looking at the sample of food items from these menus, a student notes that on day 1, the menu included _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

The ancient Greek concept of “mimesis,” a term used in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers in discussions of representational art—visual, performance, or literary art that aims to depict the real world—is a foundational concept of the Western philosophy of aesthetics. Mimesis is typically translated as “imitation” in modern editions of ancient Greek texts, but scholar Stephen Halliwell warns that this is overly reductive: “imitation” implies that art merely copies—and is thus by definition entirely derivative of—a reality that exists outside and prior to the work of art, and translating “mimesis” thusly obscures the multifaceted ways in which the ancient Greeks understood the relationship between art and reality.

Which statement, if true, would most directly support the claim by Halliwell presented in the text?

High levels of public uncertainty about which economic policies a country will adopt can make planning difficult for businesses, but measures of such uncertainty have not tended to be very detailed. Recently, however, economist Sandile Hlatshwayo analyzed trends in news reports to derive measures not only for general economic policy uncertainty but also for uncertainty related to specific areas of economic policy, like tax or trade policy. One revelation of her work is that a general measure may not fully reflect uncertainty about specific areas of policy, as in the case of the United Kingdom, where general economic policy uncertainty _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to illustrate the claim?

Fish whose DNA has been modified to include genetic material from other species are known as transgenic. Some transgenic fish have genes from jellyfish that result in fluorescence (that is, they glow in the dark). Although these fish were initially engineered for research purposes in the 1990s, they were sold as pets in the 2000s and can now be found in the wild in creeks in Brazil. A student in a biology seminar who is writing a paper on these fish asserts that their escape from Brazilian fish farms into the wild may have significant negative long-term ecological effects.

Which quotation from a researcher would best support the student’s assertion?

It may seem that the optimal strategy for an animal pursuing prey or escaping predators is to move at maximal speed, but the energy expense of exploiting full speed capacity can disfavor such a strategy even in escape contexts, as evidenced by the fact that ______.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the text?

Characteristics of the Banks of the Provo River Downstream of the Jordanelle Dam

The Jordanelle Dam was built on the Provo River in Utah in 1992. Earth scientist Adriana E. Martinez and colleagues tracked changes to the environment on the banks of the river downstream of the dam, including how much grass and forest cover were present. They concluded that the dam changed the flow of the river in ways that benefited grass plants but didn’t benefit trees.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support Martinez and colleagues’ conclusion?

Almost all works of fiction contain references to the progression of time, including the time of day when events in a story take place. In a 2020 study, Allen Kim, Charuta Pethe, and Steven Skiena claim that an observable pattern in such references reflects a shift in human behavior prompted by the spread of electric lighting in the late nineteenth century. The researchers drew this conclusion from an analysis of more than 50,000 novels spanning many centuries and cultures, using software to recognize and tally both specific time references—that is, clock phrases, such as 7 a.m. or 2:30 p.m.—and implied ones, such as mentions of meals typically associated with a particular time of day.

Which finding from the study, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ conclusion?

Land Area Covered by Native Flowering Plants at a Site in Antarctica

The only flowering plant species native to Antarctica, Colobanthus quitensis and Deschampsia antarctica grow in places where the earth remains free of ice for much of the year. Botanist Nicoletta Cannone wondered how the warming of Antarctica’s climate in recent years had affected these species, so she visited a site in Antarctica, first in 2009 and later in 2018, to count the number of plants growing there. Cannone found that the area of land covered by the two species had significantly expanded during the nine-year period. While both species likely benefited from warming temperatures, Colobanthus quitensis _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the comparison?

Geographer Adebayo Oluwole Eludoyin and his colleagues surveyed small-scale farmers in three locations in Ondo State, Nigeria—which has mountainous terrain in the north, an urbanized center, and coastal terrain in the south—to learn more about their practices, like the types of crops they mainly cultivated. In some regions, female farmers were found to be especially prominent in the cultivation of specific types of crops and even constituted the majority of farmers who cultivated those crops; for instance, _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

Ochre sea stars live in tidal pools along the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. At night, they move to higher shore levels in search of prey. But scientists Corey Garza and Carlos Robles noticed that ochre sea stars stayed at lower levels at night after heavy rains. Garza and Robles hypothesized that a layer of fresh water formed by rainfall was a barrier to the sea stars. To test their hypothesis, the scientists did an experiment. They placed some sea stars in a climbable tank of seawater and other sea stars in a similar tank of seawater with a layer of fresh water on top. Then, the scientists watched the sea stars’ behavior at night.

Which finding from the experiment, if true, would most directly support Garza and Robles’s hypothesis?

While attending school in New York City in the 1980s, Okwui Enwezor encountered few works by African artists in exhibitions, despite New York’s reputation as one of the best places to view contemporary art from around the world. According to an arts journalist, later in his career as a renowned curator and art historian, Enwezor sought to remedy this deficiency, not by focusing solely on modern African artists, but by showing how their work fits into the larger context of global modern art and art history.

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

Pyramids in Egypt and the Americas

A student is writing an essay about four pyramids for a history class and wants to note how long ago each pyramid was built and how tall each pyramid is. Consulting the table, the student finds that el Castillo was built 1,100 to 1,400 years ago and is _____.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the text?

Male túngara frogs make complex calls to attract mates, but their calls also attract frog-biting midges, insects that feed on the frogs’ blood. Researchers Ximena Bernal and Priyanka de Silva wondered if the calls alone are sufficient for midges to locate the frogs or if midges use carbon dioxide emitted by frogs as an additional cue to their prey’s whereabouts, like mosquitoes do. In an experiment, the researchers placed two midge traps in a túngara frog breeding area. One trap played recordings of túngara frog calls and the other released carbon dioxide along with playing the calls. Bernal and de Silva concluded that carbon dioxide does not serve as an additional cue to frog-biting midges.

Which finding from the experiment, if true, would most directly support Bernal and de Silva’s conclusion?

"Loon Point" is a 1912 poem by Amy Lowell. In the poem, which presents a nighttime scene on a body of water, Lowell describes an element of nature as an active participant in the experience, writing, ______

Which quotation from "Loon Point" most effectively illustrates the claim?

Banana Ripening Time at Different Temperatures with and without Ethylene Treatment

A student is conducting an experiment to test the effect of temperature and ethylene treatment on the ripening speed of bananas. The student treated some bananas with ethylene while leaving others untreated, then allowed both types of bananas to ripen at one of four different temperatures. Comparing the data for bananas with and without ethylene, the student concluded that _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the student’s conclusion?

Nucleobase Concentrations from Murchison Meteorite and Soil Samples in Parts per Billion

Employing high-performance liquid chromatography—a process that uses pressurized water to separate material into its component molecules—astrochemist Yashiro Oba and colleagues analyzed two samples of the Murchison meteorite that landed in Australia as well as soil from the landing zone of the meteorite to determine the concentrations of various organic molecules. By comparing the relative concentrations of types of molecules known as nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite with those in the soil, the team concluded that there is evidence that the nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite formed in space and are not the result of contamination on Earth.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support the team’s conclusion?

Three Studies' Estimated Average Velocity of LMC

In 2006, Nitya Kallivayalil and colleagues calculated the most accurate estimate yet of the average velocity (in kilometers per second) of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy. Before the 2006 study, estimates of the average velocity were low enough for the LMC to maintain an orbit around the Milky Way galaxy, but according to an analysis by Gurtina Besla and colleagues, the estimated velocity from the 2006 study is too high for the LMC to maintain such an orbit. Therefore, if Besla and colleagues are correct, the maximum average velocity for the LMC that would allow it to maintain orbit around the Milky Way is likely _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

Mosasaurs were large marine reptiles that lived in the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 100 million to 66 million years ago. Celina Suarez, Alberto Pérez-Huerta, and T. Lynn Harrell Jr. examined oxygen-18 isotopes in mosasaur tooth enamel in order to calculate likely mosasaur body temperatures and determined that mosasaurs were endothermic—that is, they used internal metabolic processes to maintain a stable body temperature in a variety of ambient temperatures. Suarez, Pérez-Huerta, and Harrell claim that endothermy would have enabled mosasaurs to include relatively cold polar waters in their range.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Suarez, Pérez-Huerta, and Harrell’s claim?

Accomplished printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) used her art to explore the Black experience in the United States. In a paper for an art history class, a student claims that Catlett had a particular talent for unifying various artistic traditions and styles in her work.

Which quotation from a scholar describing Catlett’s work would best support the student’s claim?

A student is examining a long, challenging poem that was initially published in a quarterly journal without explanatory notes, then later republished in a stand-alone volume containing only that poem and accompanying explanatory notes written by the poet. The student asserts that the explanatory notes were included in the republication primarily as a marketing device to help sell the stand-alone volume.

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

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by Willa Cather. In the novel, Cather portrays Alexandra Bergson as having a deep emotional connection to her natural surroundings: _____

Which quotation from O Pioneers! most effectively illustrates the claim?

Linguist Deborah Tannen has cautioned against framing contentious issues in terms of two highly competitive perspectives, such as pro versus con. According to Tannen, this debate-driven approach can strip issues of their complexity and, when used in front of an audience, can be less informative than the presentation of multiple perspectives in a noncompetitive format. To test Tannen’s hypothesis, students conducted a study in which they showed participants one of three different versions of local news commentary about the same issue. Each version featured a debate between two commentators with opposing views, a panel of three commentators with various views, or a single commentator.

Which finding from the students’ study, if true, would most strongly support Tannen’s hypothesis?

In 1534 CE, King Henry VIII of England split with the Catholic Church and declared himself head of the Church of England, in part because Pope Clement VII refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Two years later, Henry VIII introduced a policy titled the Dissolution of the Monasteries that by 1540 had resulted in the closure of all Catholic monasteries in England and the confiscation of their estates. Some historians assert that the enactment of the policy was primarily motivated by perceived financial opportunities.

Which quotation from a scholarly article best supports the assertion of the historians mentioned in the text?

To understand how expressions of anger in reviews of products affect readers of those reviews, business scholar Dezhi Yin and colleagues measured study participants’ responses to three versions of the same negative review—a control review expressing no anger, a review expressing a high degree of anger, and a review expressing a low degree of anger. Reviewing the data, a student concludes that the mere presence of anger in a review may not negatively affect readers’ perceptions of the review, but a high degree of anger in a review does worsen readers’ perceptions of the review.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the students’ conclusion?

Number and Origin of Clamshell Tools Found at Different Levels Below the Surface in Neanderthal Cave

Studying tools unearthed at a cave site on the western coast of Italy, archaeologist Paola Villa and colleagues have determined that prehistoric Neanderthal groups fashioned them from shells of clams that they harvested from the seafloor while wading or diving or that washed up on the beach. Clamshells become thin and eroded as they wash up on the beach, while those on the seafloor are smooth and sturdy, so the research team suspects that Neanderthals prized the tools made with seafloor shells. However, the team also concluded that those tools were likely more challenging to obtain, noting that ______.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to support the research team’s conclusion?

“To You” is an 1856 poem by Walt Whitman. In the poem, Whitman suggests that readers, whom he addresses directly, have not fully understood themselves, writing, _____

Which quotation from “To You” most effectively illustrates the claim?

Research suggests that REM sleep in animals is homeostatically regulated: animals compensate for periods of REM sleep deprivation by increasing subsequent REM sleep. When on land, fur seals get enough REM sleep, but during the weeks they’re in the water, they get almost none. In a study of fur seals’ sleep habits, researchers recorded the REM sleep (as a percentage of baseline) of fur seals once they had returned to land. They concluded that REM sleep may not be homeostatically regulated in fur seals, citing as evidence the fact that the seals in the study ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the text?

Urbanization, industrialization, and the warming climate create thermal pollution (excess heat) in the shallow subsurface soil. Susanne A. Benz and colleagues analyzed thousands of sites on three continents under one scenario in which surface temperature remains at the current level and under another in which the surface reaches the maximum plausible temperature. They then categorized each site according to the percentage of local home heating needs that could be met using this excess subsurface heat. The team concluded that if surface temperature approaches the maximum plausible level, the percentage of sites where thermal pollution could feasibly contribute to meeting home heating needs will increase.

Which choice best describes data in the graph that support Benz and colleagues’ conclusion?

Considering a large sample of companies, economics experts Maria Guadalupe, Julie Wulf, and Raghuram Rajan assessed the number of managers and leaders from different departments who reported directly to a chief executive officer (CEO). According to the researchers, the findings suggest that across the years analyzed, there was a growing interest among CEOs in connecting with more departments in their companies.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the researchers’ conclusion?

Roasted green chiles are a popular ingredient in Southwestern cuisine, but the traditional roasting method of burning propane is not environmentally friendly. To see if solar power could provide a better alternative, engineer Kenneth Armijo and his team roasted batches of green chiles using between 38 and 42 heliostats, which are devices that concentrate sunlight. The team was successful in reaching the same roasting temperature used in traditional propane roasting, but they found that propane yielded faster results. While the fastest solar-roasted green chiles took six minutes, batches using propane took only four. Armijo hypothesizes that they can reduce the roasting time for solar-roasted green chiles by using more heliostats.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Armijo’s hypothesis?

Baltimore, Maryland, has installed engineered structures along 71% of its shoreline to protect infrastructure from wave erosion and other hazards, a practice known as shoreline hardening. To evaluate the responses of waterbirds to two types of hardening structures—riprap and bulkheads—Diann Prosser et al. surveyed waterbird communities consisting of the tundra swan, the great blue heron, and 62 other species at different sites in the Chesapeake Bay on the US East Coast. Utilizing the Index of Waterbird Community Integrity (IWCI), on which a high score corresponds to high community integrity, the researchers found that bulkheads are more strongly negatively correlated with waterbird community integrity than is riprap.

Which finding, if true, would most directly illustrate the researchers’ finding?

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by Willa Cather. In the novel, Cather depicts Alexandra Bergson as a person who takes comfort in understanding the world around her. _____

Which quotation from O Pioneers! most effectively illustrates the claim?

Video Game Availability by Initial Release Years

In a recent study, researchers found that relatively few video games released over the decades remain available today. For example, only 14.22 percent of games are still available that were initially released in _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

Electric companies that use wind turbines rely on weather forecasts to predict the maximum amount of power, in megawatt-hours (MWh), they can generate using wind so that they can determine how much they’ll need to generate from other sources. When winds are stronger than they were forecast to be, however, the predicted maximum amount of electricity wind turbines could generate will be too low. For example, the graph shows that for the West region, the winds were ______.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

Percentage of Bus Shelters with Shade in a County by Areas’ Highest Average Summer Surface Temperature

A student is researching a bus system in a large county where surface temperatures vary by area and are hot in the summer. The student claims that all areas of the county should have more bus stops with shaded shelter, noting that the highest percentage of bus stops with shaded shelter for any area is only _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the student’s claim?

Sandra Cisneros’s 1984 novella The House on Mango Street made a lasting impact on US literature. Its depiction of Mexican American culture inspired later authors to examine their own heritage within their fictional works. Also influential was the book’s portrayal of the main character, Esperanza, during a pivotal year of her youth. This insightful depiction of a preteen girl encouraged authors who, like Cisneros herself, are Latina to use fictional works to examine experiences from their own youth.

Which statement, if true, would most strongly support the claim in the underlined sentence?

Neural networks are computer models intended to reflect the organization of human brains and are often used in studies of brain function. According to an analysis of 11,000 such networks, Rylan Schaeffer and colleagues advise caution when drawing conclusions about brains from observations of neural networks. They found that when attempting to mimic grid cells (brain cells used in navigation), while 90% of the networks could accomplish navigation-related tasks, only about 10% of those exhibited any behaviors similar to those of grid cells. But even this approximation of grid-cell activity has less to do with similarity between the neural networks and biological brains than it does with the rules programmed into the networks.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the claim in the underlined sentence?

Argentina, Brazil, and the United States are among the world’s leading producers of maize (corn), and each country exports a certain percentage of maize each marketing year, which runs from March to February in Argentina and Brazil and from September to August in the United States. A student is researching those percentages and finds that for the marketing year 2012/2013, the percentage of maize exported by ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the text?

In high concentrations, hydrogen sulfide ($H_2S$) is typically toxic to many plants. Frederick D. Dooley and colleagues wanted to understand what effects low doses of $H_2S$ might have on plant growth. They treated bean, corn, wheat, and pea seeds with various concentrations (measured in micromoles per liter) of $H_2S$ and tracked the germination of those seeds along with the germination of untreated seeds. Treatment with particular concentrations of $H_2S$ was associated with accelerated germination: for example, ____.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the statement?

Rivers rich in sediment appear yellow, while increases in red algae make rivers appear red. To track things like the sediment or algae content of large US rivers, John R. Gardner and colleagues used satellite data to determine the dominant visible wavelengths of light measured for various segments of these rivers. The researchers classified wavelengths of 495 nanometers (nm) and below as red, wavelengths between 495 and 560 nm as blue, and wavelengths of 560 nm and above as yellow. The researchers concluded that for the Missouri River, segments flowing into lakes tend to carry more sediment than those flowing out of lakes.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ conclusion?

“We Are Marching” is a 1921 poem by Carrie Law Morgan Figgs. In the poem, the speaker predicts future success: ______

Which quotation from “We Are Marching” most effectively illustrates the claim?

As media consumption has become increasingly multiplatform and socially mediated, active news acquisition has diminished in favor of an attitude known as “news finds me” (NFM), in which people passively rely on their social networks and ambient media environments for information about current events. Homero Gil de Zúñiga and Trevor Diehl examined data on a representative group of adults in the United States to determine participants’ strength of NFM attitude, political knowledge, and political interest. Although no major election took place sufficiently near the study for Gil de Zúñiga and Diehl to identify causality between NFM and voting behavior, they did posit that NFM may reduce voting probability through an indirect effect.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the idea advanced by Gil de Zúñiga and Diehl?

“Mrs. Spring Fragrance” is a 1912 short story by Sui Sin Far. In the story, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, a Chinese immigrant living in Seattle, is traveling in California. In letters to her husband and friend, she demonstrates her concern for what’s happening at her home in Seattle while she is away. _____

Which quotation from Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s letters most effectively illustrates the claim?

Plants like potatoes, tomatoes, and soybeans are susceptible to bacterial wilt disease caused by the bacteria Ralstonia solanacearum. A multinational team of scientists led by Zhong Wei studied whether other microbes in the soil might influence the degree to which plants are affected by the disease. The team sampled soil surrounding individual tomato plants over time and compared the results of plants that became diseased with those that remained healthy. They concluded that the presence of certain microbes in the soil might explain the difference between healthy and diseased plants.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the team’s conclusion?

Flint artifacts dating to 800,000 to 1,000,000 years ago have been recovered from the Evron Quarry in Israel. Likely created by the hominin Homo erectus, the artifacts have no visual features suggesting that they were exposed to fire, leading some scholars to conclude that these hominins had not acquired control of fire. But Zane Stepka and colleagues recently used a new method to determine whether these artifacts had been exposed to temperatures above $400^\circ \text{C}$ (the typical temperature campfires reach) and concluded that the hominins who inhabited the site may have had control of fire.

Which choice best describes data in the graph that support the team’s conclusion?

Although it’s clear that Mars once had liquid water on its surface, astronomers have debated whether the evidence of ancient water reflects a prolonged phase of warm, wet conditions—the so-called wet and warm scenario—or a brief period of melting in an otherwise consistently frozen environment. Researchers Benjamin T. Cardenas and Michael P. Lamb recently added to this debate by using data from NASA and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter to map the topography of what is now a large basin in Mars’s northern hemisphere. Cardenas and Lamb concluded that the wet and warm scenario is likely correct.

Which finding about the basin, if true, would most directly support Cardenas and Lamb’s conclusion?

The Land of Enchantment is a 1906 travel book by Lilian Whiting. In the book, which describes the experience of traveling through the southwestern United States by train, Whiting reflects on the escape from everyday life that such a journey provides: ______

Which quotation from The Land of Enchantment most effectively illustrates the claim?

Results of Footprint Analysis for Two Sets of Theropod Tracks

The table shows data from paleontologist Angélica Torices and colleagues’ 2021 study of two sets of dinosaur tracks preserved in a fossilized lake bed in Spain. The tracks, referred to as La Torre 6A and La Torre 6B, were left by two individual theropods (dinosaurs that walked on two legs). The team’s findings suggest that of the two theropods, the one that left the La Torre 6B tracks had a higher maximum mean speed, ____.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the claim?

Percentage of ULE Attributed to Population Growth and GDP per Capita Growth in Two World Regions. The x-axis shows four categories: Region 1 (1970–2000), Region 1 (2000–2014), Region 2 (1970–2000), and Region 2 (2000–2014). The y-axis shows percentage attribution from 0 to 90. Each category has two bars: one for urban population growth and one for GDP per capita growth.

In a study of urban physical expansion, Richa Mahtta et al. conducted a meta-analysis of more than 300 cities worldwide to determine whether urban land expansion (ULE) was more strongly influenced by urban population growth or by growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, a measure of economic activity. Because efficient national government is necessary to provide urban services and infrastructure that attract economic investment, Mahtta et al. propose that absent other factors, the importance of GDP per capita growth to ULE would likely increase relative to the importance of population growth as governments become more efficient. If true, this suggests the possibility that _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the statement?

In the 1980s, many musicians and journalists in the English-speaking world began to draw attention to music from around the globe—such as mbaqanga from South Africa and quan họ from Vietnam—that can’t be easily categorized according to British or North American popular music genres, typically referring to such music as “world music.” While some scholars have welcomed this development for bringing diverse musical forms to prominence in countries where they’d previously been overlooked, musicologist Su Zheng claims that the concept of world music homogenizes highly distinct traditions by reducing them all to a single category.

Which finding about mbaqanga and quan họ, if true, would most directly support Zheng’s claim?

A student is researching the Chinese government’s 1992 shift to a market economy that emphasizes trade liberalization. One means of trade liberalization involves expanding from ordinary imports into an emphasis on processing imports, which have two types: processing with assembly (in which a firm obtains raw materials from a foreign trading partner without payment and sells the final goods to that partner, charging for assembly) and processing with inputs (in which a firm expends capital to buy raw materials from a trading partner, processes them into final goods, and sells those goods to whichever trading partner it chooses). The student asserts that while initial efforts at trade liberalization were shaped by Chinese firms’ limited capital, this situation resolved during the 2000s.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the student’s assertion?

The Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has over 90,000 works of art. Digital images of thousands of those works have been put online through the museum’s website and the Google Arts & Culture project. One of the images is of Mississippi Delta, a drawing by Siah Armajani. In a paper, a student claims that putting a work from the museum online increases the number of people who experience that work.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the underlined claim?

“Looking Back on Girlhood” is an 1892 short story by Sarah Orne Jewett. In the story, the narrator explains that she prefers her hometown to other places she has visited: _____

Which quotation from “Looking Back on Girlhood” most effectively illustrates this claim?

Sense and Sensibility is an 1811 novel by Jane Austen. In the novel, Austen describes Marianne Dashwood’s ability to persuade others of the rightness of her artistic judgments, as is evident when Marianne visits with John Willoughby, a potential suitor. _____

Which quotation from Sense and Sensibility most effectively illustrates the claim?

A student is researching monthly hours of sunshine in different cities in Alaska. When comparing trends in Anchorage and Fairbanks, the student concludes that the two cities show a similar pattern in the monthly hours of sunshine from April to September.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the student’s conclusion?

Archaeologist Petra Vaiglova, anthropologist Xinyi Liu, and their colleagues investigated the domestication of farm animals in China during the Bronze Age (approximately 2000 to 1000 BCE). By analyzing the chemical composition of the bones of sheep, goats, and cattle from this era, the team determined that wild plants made up the bulk of sheep’s and goats’ diets, while the cattle’s diet consisted largely of millet, a crop cultivated by humans. The team concluded that cattle were likely raised closer to human settlements, whereas sheep and goats were allowed to roam farther away.

Which finding, if true, would most strongly support the team’s conclusion?

As a monthly newsletter formed in 1969 by a group of Asian American students at the University of California, Los Angeles, Gidra helped raise awareness about social and political issues concerning the Asian American community on campus and at large. The newsletter had an expansive reach for a publication of its kind: around 4,000 copies were published each month. A student writing a history paper, however, hypothesizes that Gidra’s influence cannot be measured by the number of newsletters published monthly alone.

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

Archaeologists have held that the Casarabe culture, which emerged in the southwestern Amazon basin in the first millennium CE, was characterized by a sparse, widely distributed population and little intervention in the surrounding wilderness. Recently, however, archaeologist Heiko Prümers and colleagues conducted a study of the region using remote-sensing technology that enabled them to create three-dimensional images of the jungle-covered landscape from above, and the researchers concluded that the Casarabe people developed a form of urbanism in the Amazon basin.

Which finding about the remote-sensing images, if true, would most directly support Prümers and colleagues’ conclusion?

“Mr. Cornelius Johnson, Office-Seeker” is a 1900 short story by Paul Laurence Dunbar. In the story, the narrator describes Mr. Cornelius Johnson’s appearance as conveying his exaggerated sense of his importance.

Which quotation from “Mr. Cornelius Johnson, Office-Seeker” most effectively illustrates the claim?

Biologists have generally believed that the diet of jaguars consists mostly of land-based mammals, but researchers studying a population of jaguars living in the Brazilian Pantanal, a tropical wetland, claim that jaguars can survive on a diet of more fish and aquatic reptiles than mammals.

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

In a research paper, a student criticizes some historians of modern African politics, claiming that they have evaluated Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, primarily as a symbol rather than in terms of his actions.

Which quotation from a work by a historian would best illustrate the student’s claim?

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?

Many insects are iridescent, or have colors that appear to shimmer and change when seen from different angles. Scientists have assumed that this feature helps to attract mates but could also attract predators. But biologist Karin Kjernsmo and a team had the idea that the shifting appearance of colors might actually make it harder for other animals to see iridescent insects. To test this idea, the team put beetle forewings on leaves along a forest path and then asked human participants to look for them. Some of the wings were naturally iridescent. Others were painted with a nonchanging color from the iridescent spectrum, such as purple or blue.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the team’s idea?

Many governments that regularly transfer money to individuals—to provide supplemental incomes for senior citizens, for example—have long done so electronically, but other countries typically have distributed physical money and have only recently developed electronic transfer infrastructure. Researchers studied the introduction of an electronic transfer system in one such location and found that recipients of electronic transfers consumed a different array of foods than recipients of physical transfers of the same amount did. One potential explanation for this result is that individuals conceive of and allocate funds in physical money differently than they conceive of and allocate funds in electronic form.

Which finding from the study, if true, would most directly weaken the potential explanation?

Icebergs generally appear to be mostly white or blue, depending on how the ice reflects sunlight. Ice with air bubbles trapped in it looks white because much of the light reflects off the bubbles. Ice without air bubbles usually looks blue because the light travels deep into the ice and only a little of it is reflected. However, some icebergs in the sea around Antarctica appear to be green. One team of scientists hypothesized that this phenomenon is the result of yellow-tinted dissolved organic carbon in Antarctic waters mixing with blue ice to produce the color green.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the team’s hypothesis?

Many scientists have believed that giraffes are solitary creatures, preferring to spend their time alone instead of with others. But observations of giraffes and their behavior in recent years has suggested that these animals may be more social than we once thought. For example, scientists Zoe Muller and Stephen Harris claim that giraffes may even help each other care for one another’s newborns.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Muller and Harris’s conclusion?

To monitor changes to glaciers in Switzerland, the government periodically measures them for features like total area of ice and mean ice thickness, which are then reported in the Swiss Glacier Inventory. These measurements can be used to compare the glaciers. For example, the Gorner glacier had _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

Boldly mixing elements of poetry, fiction, drama, philosophy, and manifesto, Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi creates cross-genre literature that explores themes such as immigration and independence. Her works have inspired responses from individuals across different fields and in a wide range of formats, from musical compositions and a comic book to architecture and furniture design. In an essay, a student asserts that the production of these diverse creations by others is reflective of Braschi’s own approach to crafting literature.

Which quotation from a scholarly review of Braschi’s work best supports the student’s claim?

By the early 1900s, the Singer Corporation, a US sewing machine manufacturer founded in 1851, began to see rapidly increasing sales abroad, particularly in Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These markets were responsible for the bulk of Singer’s overseas sales, but demand for the company’s machines in other countries also grew significantly in the early twentieth century. For instance, sales of their sewing machines in _____

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

Early Earth is thought to have been characterized by a stagnant lid tectonic regime, in which the upper lithosphere (the outer rocky layer) was essentially immobile and there was no interaction between the lithosphere and the underlying mantle. Researchers investigated the timing of the transition from a stagnant lid regime to a tectonic plate regime, in which the lithosphere is fractured into dynamic plates that in turn allow lithospheric and mantle material to mix. Examining chemical data from lithospheric and mantle-derived rocks ranging from 285 million to 3.8 billion years old, the researchers dated the transition to 3.2 billion years ago.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ conclusion?