A table question asking for a research conclusion tests whether you can turn the results into a claim. Read about the experiment to find out what happened in each treatment period, then read the table’s title and column headings. Compare earlier treatments while keeping the later treatment and plant group the same. Check each later condition for each group, because a conclusion must agree with every result it describes. A choice can describe some comparisons correctly and still fail on another.
Hints
- Hint 1
Use the table to separate the first treatment from the later treatment. Which period produced the biomass gains reported in the table?
- Hint 2
In the table, compare initial treatments while keeping the second treatment and grass line the same. Repeat this for each later condition and for both R and S.
- Hint 3
Does prior mild drought change biomass gain in the same direction under both later conditions? Check that separately for R and S.
Step-by-step
Compare within each later treatment
Step 1Find the first treatment’s effect
Rewatering continued until their leaf water status no longer differed by initial treatment, so the question asks about a lasting effect rather than incomplete recovery. The researchers measured only the biomass gained during the final period, not total plant size. How can we see what the first treatment changed? Compare initial treatments within the same line and second treatment, so neither the grass line nor later watering changes.
- Step 2
Check later watering
The table gives gains in grams, with initial and second treatments labeling the rows and R and S labeling the columns. What happened when the final period used regular watering? Prior mild drought lowered R’s gain from 5.0 to 4.5 grams and S’s from 4.4 to 4.0 grams. That’s a growth cost in both lines, 0.5 grams for R and 0.4 for S.
- Step 3
Check later severe drought
Does the same pattern hold during later severe drought? Prior mild drought raises R’s gain from 2.0 to 2.8 grams and S’s from 1.7 to 2.3 grams. Those are increases of 0.8 and 0.6 grams, so both lines benefit under later drought.
- Step 4
Test the whole conclusion
Which conclusion fits every comparison? Lasting harmful effect misses the drought benefit, while benefited only line R misses S’s response. The without imposing a growth cost conclusion fails because prior drought lowered growth under later watering. The context-dependent drought memory conclusion describes a response to later conditions in which the effect changes with the later treatment. Choice D.