A study question asking for a prediction tests whether you can apply a proposed rule to a new case. Read which feeling the researchers want to predict, then map how each setting affected the feeling already studied. Ask how their proposed rule changes that pattern for the new feeling. Keep the two feelings separate, so you predict only what the rule covers. A choice can sound reasonable in everyday life while adding a claim the proposed rule doesn’t support.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look for the feeling the researchers want to predict. What do they already know about the settings, and what are they still asking about?
- Hint 2
Map the stress pattern for both settings. Which setting lowers stress, and which raises it?
- Hint 3
How does “in the opposite way” guide the prediction about boredom? Use that phrase to connect the stress results to the three-hour garden visit.
Step-by-step
Reverse the study’s pattern
Step 1Map the confirmed stress effects
Short visits to quiet green spaces lower residents’ stress levels, while spending the same time around traffic noise tends to heighten stress. What are we being asked to predict from those results? The researchers now ask how those environments would affect boredom, so we’re predicting boredom, not stress.
- Step 2
Reverse the effects for boredom
What does in the opposite way tell us to change? Let’s reverse each setting’s effect when we switch from stress to boredom. Lower stress in quiet surroundings would go with higher boredom, while higher stress around traffic would go with lower boredom. The same setting should affect the two feelings in opposite directions, not make them rise or fall together. We’re applying the researchers’ proposed rule rather than guessing which place volunteers would enjoy.
- Step 3
Limit what the three hours tell us
The volunteers spend an entire three-hour period only in the garden, so they don’t switch environments. Does that length tell us how long the visit would feel? No, three hours gives its actual length, and the text says nothing about how long it seems. So felt longer than three hours goes past the text’s prediction about boredom.
- Step 4
Test the boredom comparison
For volunteers in a hushed botanical garden, less bored would carry the stress decrease over to boredom, while just as bored would remove the predicted difference between settings. More bored instead predicts greater boredom in the quiet setting than in the noisy one, which applies the proposed rule to these volunteers. Choice D.