Banker: My country’s laws require every bank to invest in its local community by lending money to local businesses, providing mortgages for local home purchases, and so forth. This is intended to revitalize impoverished local communities. But it is clear that the law will soon entirely cease to serve its intended purpose. An increasing number of banks incorporated in our country exist solely on the Internet and are not physically located in any specific community.

The banker’s argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

In a certain rural area, people normally dispose of household garbage by burning it. Burning household garbage releases toxic chemicals known as dioxins. New conservation regulations will require a major reduction in packaging—specifically, paper and cardboard packaging—for products sold in the area. Since such packaging materials contain dioxins, one result of the implementation of the new regulations will surely be a reduction in dioxin pollution in the area.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

City resident: These new digital electronic billboards should be banned for light pollution since they are much too bright.

Outdoor advertising spokesperson: No, that’s not true. Testing with a sophisticated light meter shows that at night they throw off less light than traditional billboards that are reflectively lit.

Your mistaken perception that they are brighter comes from looking directly at the light source—the screen itself.

The underlying strategy of the spokesperson’s response to the resident is most analogous to the underlying strategy of which of the following?

Suriland cannot both export wheat and keep bread plentiful and affordable in Suriland. Accordingly, Suriland’s wheat farmers are required to sell their crop to the government, which pays them a dollar per bushel less than the price on the world market. Therefore, if the farmers could sell their wheat on the world market, they would make a dollar per bushel more, less any additional transportation and brokerage costs they would have to pay.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

The lobbyists argued that because there is no statistical evidence that breathing other people’ s tobacco smoke increases the incidence of heart disease or lung cancer in healthy nonsmokers, legislation banning smoking in workplaces cannot be justified on health grounds.

Of the following, which is the best criticism of the argument reported above?

Consumer advocate: In our nation, food packages must list the number of calories per food serving. But most of the serving sizes used are misleadingly small and should be updated. The serving sizes were set decades ago, when our nation’s people typically ate smaller portions than they do today, and, as a result, people eating typical portions today consume more calories than the package labeling appears to indicate that they will. It is time package labeling reflected these changes.

Which of the following is the main point of the consumer advocate’s argument?

Most of Western music since the Renaissance has been based on a seven-note scale known as the diatonic scale, but when did the scale originate? A fragment of a bone flute excavated at a Neanderthal campsite has four holes, which are spaced in exactly the right way for playing the third through sixth notes of a diatonic scale. The entire flute must surely have had more holes, and the flute was made from a bone that was long enough for these additional holes to have allowed a complete diatonic scale to be played. Therefore, the Neanderthals who made the flute probably used a diatonic musical scale.

In the argument given, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?

Sasha: It must be healthy to follow a diet high in animal proteins and fats. Human beings undoubtedly evolved to thrive on such a diet, since our prehistoric ancestors ate large amounts of meat.

Jamal: But our ancestors also exerted themselves intensely in order to obtain this food, whereas most human beings today are much less physically active.

Jamal responds to Sasha by doing which of the following?

Advertisement: Our competitors’ computer salespeople are paid according to the value of the products they sell, so they have a financial incentive to convince you to buy the most expensive units—whether you need them or not. But here at Comput-o-Mart, our salespeople are paid a salary that is not dependent on the value of their sales, so they won’t try to tell you what to buy. That means when you buy a computer at Comput-o-Mart, you can be sure you’re not paying for computing capabilities you don’t need.

Which of the following would, if true, most weaken the advertisement’s reasoning?

Errors in the performance of repetitive or “boring” tasks—often attributed to a momentary lapse in concentration—can be serious in such activities as flying a passenger aircraft. Is there any method that would provide warning of such lapses—for example by monitoring brain activity? Researchers scanned the brains of volunteers performing a repetitive task. When the tasks were being performed correctly, the volunteers’ brains showed activity in cognitive-processing regions. However, these regions became less active several seconds before some errors were made, and another brain region, region X, became active. The researchers concluded that the monitoring of region X could provide warning of an impending error.

Which of the following, if true, most supports the researchers’ conclusion?