The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because

Question

The Rorschach test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose behavior and thought processes  that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing .

(A) that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing
(B) whose emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
(C) that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews
(D) that may not emerge under other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
(E) likely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures

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GMATNinja · Accepted Answer

There's a difference in meaning between "may not" and "might not." Consider two examples:

1) Tim's daughter  may  not go to the dance with the boy sporting the tattoo of Barry Manilow on his face.

Here, "may not" means "does not have permission." So, Tim's daughter has been forbidden to go to the dance with a weirdo, and Tim can rest easy.

2) Tim's daughter  might  not go to the dance with the boy sporting the tattoo of Barry Manilow on his face.

Now, "might not" means there's a  possibility  that something won't happen. So there's still a real chance that Tim's daughter will be attending the dance with a shady character.

For our GMAT example, it makes sense to write that there's a possibility that behavior and thought processes won't emerge; it doesn't really make sense to write that the behavior and thought processes have been forbidden to emerge. So "might not" is the more logical option.

I hope that helps!

gmatt1476 · Answer

Official Explanation

Parallelism; Rhetorical construction

As worded, it is unclear whether other modifies both procedures and weeks or procedures only. To clarify that other does not modify both procedures and weeks, the correct phrasing here would be in weeks. Also, the construction that may be unlikely to emerge is needlessly wordy; that might not emerge is preferable.

A. This choice is flawed for the reasons given above.

B. This choice is also unclear as to what other is intended to modify. Also, whose is generally restricted to use with people (or, more rarely, animals) rather than with abstractions such as behavior and thought processes.

C. Correct. This choice clearly expresses the intended idea.

D. Although may and might are often interchangeable, this is not true of may not and might not. This is because may not can be interpreted to mean are not permitted to. This is of course not the intended meaning here; might not cannot be interpreted in this way, and so would be preferable.

E. In this choice, the meaning is unclear. The word other can be interpreted as being contrasted to ordinary interviewing rather than to the Rorschach test; however, it is clear that the sentence intends for these other procedures to be contrasted with the Rorschach test. Furthermore, this version expresses unlikeliness more strongly than the other versions do: something that is likely not to happen is something that has a very low probability of occurring, while something that is unlikely to happen has a relatively higher chance of occurring.

The correct answer is C.

Archit3110 · Answer

IMO C ; that might not emerge  in other  procedures or  in weeks of ordinary interviews

ll sentence “unlikely to emerge in X or in Y” is parallel and idiomatic

r19 · Answer

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose behavior and thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing.

Can anyone tell me ,To what 'that" is referring to ?
is it only thought process ?

Can anyone tell me ,To what 'that" is referring to ? 
is it only thought process ?

AjiteshArun · Answer

The  that  refers to   behavior and thought processes  . It cannot refer only to  thought processes , as that would leave  behavior  undefined. That is, if we force the  that  to refer only to  thought processes , we'll end up with a meaning error:

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose 
(a)   behavior  
  and  
(b)   thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing .

The meaning of the sentence cannot be that  behavior  ( in general ) is exposed by the test.

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Ayush, D says:

....that may not emerge  under  (other procedures or)  weeks of ordinary interviews .

under  weeks of ordinary interviews  is  incorrect  usage; it should be:   in  weeks of ordinary interviews .

Bombsante · Answer

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose behavior and thought processes  that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing.
 
(A) that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing  (other procedures or ordinary interviewing, not parallel. Eliminate) 
(B) whose emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews  (whose is used as a singular IMO, not correct) 
(C) that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews  (other procedures or ordinary interviews +1, That +1. Correct) 
(D) that may not emerge under other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews  (under is idiomatically incorrect) 
(E) unlikely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures  (ordinary interviewing or other procedures. not parallel. Eliminate)

churuand · Answer

Hi, using POE, I left with option C and D. However I marked the option D because "might" is the past tense of "may", while author is using simple present on this question. If it is not because of "emerge in" and "emerge under", how I can eliminate the option with "may" and "might" ?

nkshmalik1 · Answer

how is that referring to the two entities ?

GMATNinja · Answer

"I gave her red and white roses that I bought at the flower shop." - What did I buy at the flower shop? Roses. What kind of roses? Red and white roses. You might say, "Well, how do we know that you didn't give her 1) white roses that you bought at the flower shop and 2) red (whatever that means)." Well, yes, technically that is a possibility, but it doesn't make any sense. We have something similar in choice (C): Is it possible that the diagnostic took takes only one hour to expose 1) thought processes that might not emerge in other procedures/weeks of interviews and 2) behavior? Technically, yes, but that interpretation doesn't make much sense. More importantly, even if that were an issue, there would be no way to avoid it! You could make the same argument for all five answer choices, so we don't need to worry about this while analyzing the options.

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

This question tests parallelism with ‘ or ’.
We are used to seeing parallelism with ‘and’ most of the time and therefore the ‘or’ might go unnoticed.

We can see that for the sentence to maintain parallelism, it has to say  ‘in other procedures or in weeks’

(A) that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or  weeks  of ordinary interviewing
(B)  whose  emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
(C) that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews
(D) that may not emerge  under  other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
(E) likely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures -> alters the meaning

The only Option that observes this rule is  Option C.

We might use POE and narrow it down to Options C and D.

In  Option D , notice how it has ‘under’ which is idiomatically incorrect.  Eliminate.  
 
 Option C  is the best option.

Hope this helps!

David nguyen · Answer

How does A have parallelism error? Isn't the preposition "IN" implied after "or"? 
Please advise. Thanks.

GMATNinja · Answer

Sure, the parallelism in choice (A) doesn't look so bad:

"... behavior and thought processes that may be  unlikely to emerge in  (1) other procedures or (2) weeks of ordinary interviewing." - We have a parallel list of nouns, and both of those nouns make sense when preceded by "... unlikely to emerge in".

However, there is another way to interpret the parallelism in choice (A):

"... behavior and thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in  other  (1) procedures or (2) weeks of ordinary interviewing." - In this case, "other" modifies both "procedures" AND "weeks".

So the problem with (A) is that the meaning is open to interpretation. In choice (C), the addition of the word "in" before "weeks" eliminates that ambiguity.

Another vote in favor of (C) over (A) is that, as explained in  this post , "might" is a more logical option than "may". Also, there's no reason to use "that may be unlikely to emerge" instead of the more concise "that might not emerge".

None of those reasons are silver bullets, but when we compare the differences between (A) and (C), (C) emerges (haha) as the better choice.

I hope that helps!

kornn · Answer

Dear  AjiteshArun   GMATNinja   GMATGuruNY   DmitryFarber   MartyTargetTestPrep ,

Does the above observation only apply to "may NOT"?

OA :  It MAY someday be worthwhile to try to recover uranium from seawater, but at present this process is prohibitively expensive.

IMO, the above sentence does not imply any  permission  at all. 
"may" (like "might") implies possibility.

Victz · Answer

I thought "may" can mean two things:

GMATIntensive · Answer

Sentence Analysis

https://www.thegmatco.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/7.png

The sentence talks about a test that is gaining new respect. Why is it gaining respect? Because it exposes certain behavior and processes that other procedures may not be able to expose.

There are no major grammar or meaning issues in the sentence. However, the sentence has the following two quality issues:

1. Redundancy: “may be” and “unlikely” are redundant. Either you say “may not” or “is unlikely”.
2. Since the word “weeks” is a noun, one can consider it parallel to “procedures”. In such a case, it’d mean “other weeks of ordinary interviewing”. Not a logical idea. To clarify that “weeks” is parallel to “other procedures”, we need to repeat the preposition “in”.

Option Analysis

A.  that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing  
 Incorrect . For the reasons mentioned above.

B.  whose emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews 
 Incorrect . This option has the second issue of option A. In addition, “whose emergence” means “emergence of behavior and processes”. I don’t think we put it like this in standard English. The correct way to communicate this idea is “behavior and processes may emerge”.

C.  that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews  
 Correct . “May not” and “might not” are generally used interchangeably. However, in some contexts, “may not” be considered equivalent to “does not have the permission”. Thus, some books recommend using “might not” over “may not” in situations in which we are talking about chances, not permission.

D.  that may not emerge under other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews  
 Incorrect . This option has the second issue of option A. In addition, the use of “may not” is not preferred, as explained above.

E.  likely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures 
 Incorrect . For the following reasons:

1. Currently, the construction is “This test takes one hour to expose behavior and processes likely not to emerge…”. To convey the meaning more clearly, we need a relative clause modifier “that are likely not to emerge”.
2. “emerge during an activity” is different from “emerge in an activity”. The former means that the “emergence” happened at the same time as the activity while the latter means that the “emergence” happened inside the activity. The latter makes more sense in this context.
3. Here, “other procedures” seems to talk about procedures other ordinary interviewing. However, in the given context, it makes much more sense to talk about procedures other than the Rorschach test.

GMATNinja · Answer

Sure, it's definitely possible to use "may" without implying permission. (And I probably should have mentioned that in my earlier post! Sorry, I was lazy about that.)

In this particular question, we get to choose between an option ("may") with two possible interpretations and an option ("might") with only one interpretation. The phrase "may not emerge" certainly  seems  like it could imply permission, so at the very least the reader has to think about it before realizing that permission doesn't apply in this context.

By using "might", choice (C) avoids causing the user to do a double-take. In other words, the meaning is a bit more clear in choice (C), so that's a vote against (D). Combining that with the preposition difference described in  this post , we see that (C) is the  better  choice, even though we don't have a smoking gun here.

I hope that helps clarify!

zoezhuyan · Answer

Dear  GMATNinja ,  GMATNinjaTwo ,  VeritasKarishma ,  MartyTargetTestPrep ,  TheGMATCo

I am a little confused by B and C.

#1 whose  
I read the whole thread, some say the use of  whose  is incorrect because  whose  can only refer to people or animate things, I don't agree,  whose  can refer to non animate things, an example from MANHATTAN guide:  the town whose water supply was contaminated.

#2 parallelism. 
 
I don't think this question intends to meant "other weeks of ordinary interviewing", it just two things are parallel,  procedures  and  weeks of ordinary interviewing , so I think the parallelism in B is correct.

honestly, I have no idea what's the problem in B.

I did not pick up C, because I thought the parallelism both " NOT in X or in Y " and " Not in X or Y " are correct, while in C, it says might  not   emerge   in X or in Y , why not  might emerge NOT in X or in Y ,

genuinely need experts' help.

have a nice day

deveshj21 · Answer

Can someone give a good reason to eliminate option E.+
I didn't eliminate it on solid grounds .

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because

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