A words in context question tests whether you can use the text to work out a missing word’s meaning. Read the whole passage to find how each stage of a process affects the next. For a blank about the process’s effect, ask what changes as the process repeats. Words about evidence tell you whether new facts appear, while later behavior shows what the process does. Predict in plain words, then test meanings rather than how natural each word sounds.
Hints
- Hint 1
Track what the model is trained on and where its classifications go.
- Hint 2
Read the sentence about how scholars choose which works to compare. Trace how that affects scrutiny of rival attributions.
- Hint 3
The last sentence adds a limit on independent evidence. Predict the effect on the original judgments from the change in scrutiny, rather than from whether the assignments have been proved true.
Step-by-step
Trace the feedback loop
Step 1Find what the model starts from
The archive provisionally attributes anonymous essays to writers, which means its assignments aren't final. Where do the model’s judgments come from? It is trained on those attributions, and catalogers feed its classifications back into the archive. The model builds on the archive’s starting judgments, so its later classifications don't provide a separate check on who wrote the essays.
- Step 2
Predict the effect of less scrutiny
What changes when scholars use those assigned names to choose which works to compare? The clue is rival attributions attract progressively less scrutiny, so competing ideas about who wrote the essays receive less checking over time. That leaves the original assignments facing fewer challenges, even if the alternatives haven't been shown to be wrong. Less checking of rivals can make the original judgments more firmly accepted. Predict making the original judgments firmer, rather than making them more accurate.
- Step 3
Separate acceptance from proof
How does the phrase Without adding an independent source of evidence limit the conclusion? It means greater acceptance isn't independent proof, not that the loop weakens the original judgments. Reconsider means to think again, and reverse means to change to the opposite; reduced scrutiny of rivals shows neither move. Discredit means to make seem unreliable, which goes against the growing acceptance of the original assignments.
- Step 4
Match the verb’s meaning
Solidify means to make firm or strengthen. Applied to the archive's original judgments, it describes firmer acceptance of those assignments without claiming they've been independently proved right. Choice B.