CAMANISHPARMAR wrote:
A behavioral scientist hypothesized that the constant barrage of noise that surrounds modern humans leads to antisocial behavior. To test this hypothesis, he placed a loudspeaker beside the cage of a pair of guinea pigs and played white noise through it. He brought the loudspeaker closer to the animals each subsequent day of the experiment, thereby increasing the guinea pigs’ daily exposure of noise. The scientist observed that the guinea pigs stopped socializing with each other after the seventh day but resumed socializing normally when the loudspeaker was removed from the cage.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously jeopardizes the scientist's hypothesis?
A) During the experiment, the guinea pigs stopped socializing due to the intense level of the noise.
B) In a similar experiment conducted by another scientist, the guinea pigs did not resume socializing when the noise source was removed.
C) On the seventh day, the loudspeaker took up so much space in the cage that the guinea pigs could not get near each other.
D) Prior to the experiment, the guinea pigs used in the experiment socialized with each other normally.
E) The sound pressure level from a loudspeaker increases to the inverse square of the distance from the loudspeaker.
I would want to go with C. Below is my reasoning for the same. Feel free to point errors. Thanks!
The question asks us to weaken the scientist's hypothesis which states that the constant noise (lets call it X) leads to antisocial behavior (AB; lets call it Y). In order to weaken we need to introduce evidence that may show that it is either Y that leads to X, X and Y are just a coincidence or there is a third factor Z that leads to Y.
Option A - Strengthens the hypothesis by suggesting that it is the noise that led to the AB
Option B - Strengthens the hypothesis by indicating that the guinea pigs stopped socializing after the noise was introduced and the effect continued even after the noise was removed
Option C - This weakens the hypothesis by indicating that there was a third factor i.e. space constraint which led to the AB and not noise
Option D - Strengthens the hypothesis. If we combine this with the last line in the prompt then what we see is that the guinea pigs were socializing normally before and after the experiment, but stopped socializing when the white noise was introduced, hence strengthening the claim that it was indeed the noise that led to AB
Option E - If my interpretation is correct then this statement tells us that \(SPL = 1/distance^2\) which means that the intensity of the sound decreases if the distance of the cage from the loudspeaker increases. Applying to our prompt where the speaker was brought closer to the cage would have increased the SPL. Combine this with the evidence provided that the socializing stopped on \(7th\) day indicates that it was indeed the noise that was the culprit.