D. Comparing actions of children to those of adults. Like is comparing people/things, as is used for comparing actions. Logical comparison needed, hence D

POE:

A) This choice changes the meaning, because it says adults also do not organize their attention or perceptions. But the point of the sentence is to convey contrast between children and adults.
C) This choice is wrong for two reasons. 1) we need to show contrast between children and adults and 2) AS is only used for clauses not nouns
E) same as D, but worse because children is plural and you would need ADULTS to maintain parallelism

We have B and D remaining:
B) Incorrect because Like/Unlike is used to compare nouns and we have to show contrast between what children DO and what adults DO.
D) If we plug everything back into the sentence it would read "Because young children do not organize their attention or perceptions systematically, as adults [organize their attention or perceptions], they may notice and remember details that their elders ignore.

Correct answer: D

The author is not comparing children to adults. He's comparing what children don't do to what adults do
It's a case of like vs as
Like is used to compare nouns. As is used to compare Clauses. Since it's a clause, we will use as. A and B are eliminated.
Among C,D and E, only D is parallel. Answer should be D.

Because young children do not organize their attention or perceptions systematically, like adults, they may notice and remember details that their elders ignore.

(A) like adults

(B) unlike an adult

(C) as adults

(D) as adults do

(E) as an adult

The key is "do not organize". We are comparing an action that both adults and young cha ildren perform
Therefore, we cannot use "like". Like is followed by a noun phrase; as is followed by a clause with a verb.

Eliminate (A) and (B)

Between (C), (D), (E)
(C) is incorrect because there is no verb present
(E) is incorrect because there is no verb present and it uses singular "an adult". You cannot compare plural "young children" to singular "an adult"

(D) is correct

Ans: (D)

EDIT: why was I marked incorrect sudarshan22

Official Explanation :

The sentence does not compare children to adults, instead compares what children don't do to what adults do.

Choices A, B, C, and E are faulty because they compare dissimilar entities, also the verb is part of the comparison, therefore, we need "as".

Choice D, is the best answer.
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Parallelism with 'do', like is only for nouns so use as, so D.

Hey generis , GKomoku.
I am always doing wrong on these Like vs As questions even though I know that noun follows like and clause follows as.
Please clear my mind on this .

Straight D as actions of children are compared with that of an adult

This is a comparison question of action of young children with the action of elders and like is used to compare nouns "as'' compare clauses. We need as here to compare the two actions. Only D gives perfect meaning.

The answer is D.
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