A telefilm was exhibited to a group of school going

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A telefilm was exhibited to a group of school going children.

A film is exhibited to a group. Ok

the telefilm contained characters who harmed others either deliberately or accidentally.

The actors (interpreting their role) do something deliberately or accidentally.


when the children questioned on the appropriate punishment for these different characters, they suggested same punishments, equally, for all those who caused
harm whether intentionally or otherwise.

The children do not care about too much of the punishements. they give them indipendently. in other words: no matter what. from this we can argue that the same children do not distinguish bettwee something that is good from what is NOt good. the reasons maybe go beyond our scope to understand this

so, it is clear that children children do not go into intentions of a criminal to determine the degree of punishment to be awarded.

The conclusion confirm the previous statement

which of the following, if true, would most seriously weakens above conclusion.

a) The children suggested punishments according to the severity of the harm done by characters.

here the childre act based on the severety of the harm inflicted but NOT if these are given intentionally or not

b) The older among the children suggested punishments that were similar to the ones suggested by adults in similar cases.

Irrelevant this comparison

c) Younger children are as likely to cause harm to others as older children.

Irrelevant this comparison

d) Interpretation of the film requires maturity, to be able to distinguish between committed intentionally or otherwise.

if we find something that explain that the children are conscious about the intention of a criminal to do so the argument is weaken. D say this: the children are able to distinguish clearly

e) The film depicted the severity of the crime clearly.

What the movie depicts is irrelevant

D is correct

First of all, I don't know whether you read carcass' thorough explanation here. I thought carcass did a good job analyzing this question.

(A) is a peculiar answer, because it directly contradicts the evidence in the argument. The argument says, "[the children] suggested same punishments, equally, for all those who caused harm." (A) implies the children suggested different punishments, not the same. Right there, this is the mark of a poorly written question. On the GMAT, the CR answer choices will add new information or clarify, but will never directly contradict the evidence.
Having said that, I agree with what carcass said. Suppose;
Character A causes a mild bruise by accident
Character B causes a mild bruise on purpose
Character C causes someone to lose a limb by accident. (Oops!)
Character D causes someone to lose a limb on purpose.
If we were judging by intention, we would give the severest punishment to D, and relatively severe to B, whereas we would consider the non-intentionality a strongly mitigating factor for C, and probably we would let A pass without comment. In the real worlds, D would clearly be a felony, and depending on circumstances, B might be considered the felony of assault. C might be tried under something like "recklessness", or it were purely accidental, not the result of reckless behavior, it would be handled only in the civil courts. A has no place at all in the court system.
By contrast, (A) suggest the kids would punish C & D the same, and would punish A & B the same. In other words, they are totally ignoring the issue of intentionality, which is precisely what the argument says.

The conclusion of the argument is: "It is clear that children children do not go into intentions of a criminal to determine the degree of punishment to be awarded." The phrasing "go into" is regrettably informal and imprecise. Also, is punishment really "awarded"? Congratulations, you win this punishment? This question is nowhere near GMAT-level material. Presumably, what this conclusion means is: "Children choose not to give any consideration to a criminal's intention when they determine the appropriate degree of punishment." What weakens this conclusion?

(D) says, essentially, because the telefilm was sophisticated, children simply didn't understand the intentions of the characters. It's not that they could recognize the intentions and chose not to take them into consideration, as the (clarified) conclusion suggests. Rather, they just didn't understand intentions at all. All they could see were the instances of harm, so they treated accidental harm and intentional harm the same.

Part of what made this a challenging question is that it was of such poor quality.

Let me know if anyone reading this has any questions.
Mike

D can be the correct answer, only if we assume that children do not have maturity. This is a truth. But I m not sure that it can be carried in this question. There are 100's of child prodigy......
So i think D may or may not be the correct answer........

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