Question ID f1bfbed3
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: f1bfbed3
Marta Coll and colleagues’ 2010 Mediterranean Sea biodiversity census reported approximately 17,000 species, nearly
double the number reported in Carlo Bianchi and Carla Morri’s 2000 census—a difference only partly attributable to the
description of new invertebrate species in the interim. Another factor is that the morphological variability of microorganisms
is poorly understood compared to that of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and algae, creating uncertainty about how to
evaluate microorganisms as species. Researchers’ decisions on such matters therefore can be highly consequential. Indeed,
the two censuses reported similar counts of vertebrate, plant, and algal species, suggesting that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. Coll and colleagues reported a much higher number of species than Bianchi and Morri did largely due to the inclusion of
invertebrate species that had not been described at the time of Bianchi and Morri’s census.
B. some differences observed in microorganisms may have been treated as variations within species by Bianchi and Morri
but treated as indicative of distinct species by Coll and colleagues.
C. Bianchi and Morri may have been less sensitive to the degree of morphological variation displayed within a typical
species of microorganism than Coll and colleagues were.
D. the absence of clarity regarding how to differentiate among species of microorganisms may have resulted in Coll and
colleagues underestimating the number of microorganism species.
Question ID 6b8a7c74
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 6b8a7c74
One recognized social norm of gift giving is that the time spent obtaining a gift will be viewed as a reflection of the gift’s
thoughtfulness. Marketing experts Farnoush Reshadi, Julian Givi, and Gopal Das addressed this view in their studies of
norms specifically surrounding the giving of gift cards, noting that while recipients tend to view digital gift cards (which can
be purchased online from anywhere and often can be redeemed online as well) as superior to physical gift cards (which
sometimes must be purchased in person and may only be redeemable in person) in terms of usage, 94.8 percent of
participants surveyed indicated that it is more socially acceptable to give a physical gift card to a recipient. This finding
suggests that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. gift givers likely overestimate the amount of effort required to use digital gift cards and thus mistakenly assume gift
recipients will view them as less desirable than physical gift cards.
B. physical gift cards are likely preferred by gift recipients because the tangible nature of those cards offers a greater
psychological sense of ownership than digital gift cards do.
C. physical gift cards are likely less desirable to gift recipients than digital gift cards are because of the perception that
physical gift cards require unnecessary effort to obtain.
D. gift givers likely perceive digital gift cards as requiring relatively low effort to obtain and thus wrongly assume gift
recipients will appreciate them less than they do physical gift cards.
Question ID ce4448b7
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: ce4448b7
Researchers recently found that disruptions to an enjoyable experience, like a short series of advertisements during a
television show, often increase viewers’ reported enjoyment. Suspecting that disruptions to an unpleasant experience would
have the opposite effect, the researchers had participants listen to construction noise for 30 minutes and anticipated that
those whose listening experience was frequently interrupted with short breaks of silence would thus ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. find the disruptions more irritating as time went on.
B. rate the listening experience as more negative than those whose listening experience was uninterrupted.
C. rate the experience of listening to construction noise as lasting for less time than it actually lasted.
D. perceive the volume of the construction noise as growing softer over time.
Question ID 4b3d6062
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 4b3d6062
The Mammillaria cactus M. boolii occurs naturally only in the state of Sonora in Mexico, and the smallness of its range
makes it especially vulnerable to extinction. The traditional single-species approach to conservation emphasizes the need to
focus on individual species most at risk, like M. boolii, but recently, conservationists have argued that an ecosystem-based
approach that incorporates the many interactions between the climate, terrain, and various species of a given geographical
area may lead to better outcomes for all the species in a given location. If this view is correct, the single-species approach to
the conservation of M. boolii could thus ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. lead to a better understanding of how the distribution of Mammillaria species throughout Mexico has affected their
survival.
B. allow conservationists to better consider how climatic changes affecting Sonora may reduce the number of species
competing with M. boolii.
C. erroneously shift the focus of conservation efforts away from M. boolii itself.
D. fail to consider the ways in which the survival of M. boolii may be influenced by changes in the populations of other
species that inhabit Sonora.
Question ID 58e9e497
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 58e9e497
In the early nineteenth century, some Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States used agricultural techniques
developed by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people centuries earlier, but it seems that few of those farmers had actually
seen Haudenosaunee farms firsthand. Barring the possibility of several farmers of the same era independently developing
techniques that the Haudenosaunee people had already invented, these facts most strongly suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. those farmers learned the techniques from other people who were more directly influenced by Haudenosaunee practices.
B. the crops typically cultivated by Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States were not well suited to
Haudenosaunee farming techniques.
C. Haudenosaunee farming techniques were widely used in regions outside the northeastern United States.
D. Euro-American farmers only began to recognize the benefits of Haudenosaunee farming techniques late in the
nineteenth century.
Question ID e185a21f
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: e185a21f
One theory behind human bipedalism speculates that it originated in a mostly ground-based ancestor that practiced four-
legged “knuckle-walking,” like chimpanzees and gorillas do today, and eventually evolved into moving upright on two legs.
But recently, researchers observed orangutans, another relative of humans, standing on two legs on tree branches and using
their arms for balance while they reached for fruits. These observations may suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. bipedalism evolved because it was advantageous to a tree-dwelling ancestor of humans.
B. bipedalism must have evolved simultaneously with knuckle-walking and tree-climbing.
C. moving between the ground and the trees would have been difficult without bipedalism.
D. a knuckle-walking human ancestor could have easily moved bipedally in trees.
Question ID f9bd4e61
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: f9bd4e61
German theater practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) believed that theater should elicit an intellectual rather than an
emotional response from audiences, provoking them to consider social and political realities that extend beyond the
characters and events depicted onstage. Brecht’s influence can be seen in English playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1979 play
Cloud 9: although the play sometimes invites empathetic reactions, it primarily works to engage audiences in an
interrogation of patriarchy and colonialism, which it does by placing audiences at a distance, thereby encouraging them to
______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. focus on the characters’ beliefs about social and political issues as revealed by the characters’ actions.
B. reflect on social and political phenomena not directly related to patriarchy and colonialism.
C. recognize pertinent social and political parallels between Germany during Brecht’s time and England at the time when
Churchill was writing Cloud 9.
D. be dispassionate as they think critically about the social and political questions raised by the play.
Question ID 4ba0695d
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 4ba0695d
The alpaca was domesticated by Indigenous peoples in the Andes about 7,000 years ago. But which wild species did it
descend from, the vicuña or guanaco? A research team led by Ruiwen Fan may have solved the mystery, concluding that the
alpaca is the domesticated form of the vicuña but that the modern alpaca gets only 64 percent of its genetic material from
its wild ancestor. The rest comes from the domesticated llama. The llama, meanwhile, gets 95.5 percent of its genetic
material from its own wild ancestor, the guanaco, and the rest from the alpaca. The llama and alpaca apparently interbred
widely for only a handful of generations between 400 and 600 years ago. Assuming that the findings of Fan’s team are valid,
it can be inferred that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. modern llama populations have a greater degree of genetic diversity, on average, than modern alpaca populations do.
B. the domestication process of the alpaca may have involved some introduction of genetic material from the llama.
C. the period of interbreeding resulted in a greater genetic difference between alpacas and their wild ancestors than
between llamas and their wild ancestors.
D. if they were subjected to genetic testing, modern populations of guanacos and vicuñas would likely show traces of
ancient interbreeding as well.
Question ID aaddd60f
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: aaddd60f
Scientists studying Mars long thought the history of its crust was relatively simple. One reason for this is that geologic and
climate data collected by a spacecraft showed that the crust was largely composed of basalt, likely as a result of intense
volcanic activity that brought about a magma ocean, which then cooled to form the planet’s surface. A study led by Valerie
Payré focused on additional information—further analysis of data collected by the spacecraft and infrared wavelengths
detected from Mars’s surface—that revealed the presence of surprisingly high concentrations of silica in certain regions on
Mars. Since a planetary surface that formed in a mostly basaltic environment would be unlikely to contain large amounts of
silica, Payré concluded that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. the information about silica concentrations collected by the spacecraft is likely more reliable than the silica information
gleaned from infrared wavelengths detected from Mars’s surface.
B. high silica concentrations on Mars likely formed from a different process than that which formed the crusts of other
planets.
C. having a clearer understanding of the composition of Mars’s crust and the processes by which it formed will provide
more insight into how Earth’s crust formed.
D. Mars’s crust likely formed as a result of other major geological events in addition to the cooling of a magma ocean.
Question ID 08395130
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 08395130
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is projected to maintain operation until at least 2030, but it has already revolutionized
high-resolution imaging of solar-system bodies in visible and ultraviolet (UV) light wavelengths, notwithstanding that only
about 6% of the bodies imaged by the HST are within the solar system. NASA researcher Cindy L. Young and colleagues
assert that a new space telescope dedicated exclusively to solar-system observations would permit an extensive survey of
minor solar-system bodies and long-term UV observation to discern how solar-system bodies change over time. Young and
colleagues’ recommendation therefore implies that the HST ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. will likely continue to be used primarily to observe objects outside the solar system.
B. will no longer be used to observe solar system objects if the telescope recommended by Young and colleagues is
deployed.
C. can be modified to observe the features of solar system objects that are of interest to Young and colleagues.
D. lacks the sensors to observe the wavelengths of light needed to discern how solar system bodies change over time.
Question ID 9abc3ba5
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 9abc3ba5
“Gestures” in painting are typically thought of as bold, expressive brushstrokes. In the 1970s, American painter Jack Whitten
built a 12-foot (3.7-meter) tool he named the “developer” to apply paint to an entire canvas in one motion, resulting in his
series of “slab” paintings from that decade. Whitten described this process as making an entire painting in “one gesture,”
signaling a clear departure from the prevalence of gestures in his work from the 1960s. Some art historians claim this shift
represents “removing gesture” from the process. Therefore, regardless of whether using the developer constitutes a gesture,
both Whitten and these art historians likely agree that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. any tool that a painter uses to create an artwork is capable of creating gestures.
B. Whitten’s work from the 1960s exhibits many more gestures than his work from the 1970s does.
C. Whitten became less interested in exploring the role of gesture in his work as his career progressed.
D. Whitten’s work from the 1960s is much more realistic than his work from the 1970s is.
Question ID d1539546
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: d1539546
Tides can deposit large quantities of dead vegetation within a salt marsh, smothering healthy plants and leaving a salt panne
—a depression devoid of plants that tends to trap standing water—in the marsh’s interior. Ecologist Kathryn Beheshti and
colleagues found that burrowing crabs living within these pannes improve drainage by loosening the soil, leading the pannes
to shrink as marsh plants move back in. At salt marsh edges, however, crab-induced soil loosening can promote marsh loss
by accelerating erosion, suggesting that the burrowing action of crabs ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. can be beneficial to marshes with small pannes but can be harmful to marshes with large pannes.
B. may promote increases in marsh plants or decreases in marsh plants, depending on the crabs’ location.
C. tends to be more heavily concentrated in areas of marsh interiors with standing water than at marsh edges.
D. varies in intensity depending on the size of the panne relative to the size of the surrounding marsh.
Question ID f27559d4
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: f27559d4
Volunteering, or giving time for a community service for free, is a valuable form of civic engagement because helping in a
community is also good for society as a whole. In a survey of youths in the United States, most young people said that they
believe volunteering is a way to help people on an individual level. Meanwhile, only 6% of the youths said that they think
volunteering is a way to help fix problems in society overall. These replies suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. many young people think they can volunteer only within their own communities.
B. volunteering may be even more helpful than many young people think it is.
C. volunteering can help society overall more than it can help individual people.
D. many young people may not know how to find ways to volunteer their time.
Question ID 61228830
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 61228830
A heliograph is a semaphore device used for sending optical communications—usually in the form of Morse code—by
reflecting flashes of sunlight off a mirror. Heliographs were used for rapid communication across expansive distances for
military, surveying, and forestry purposes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were largely
effective only during the daytime, and the range of the device depended on factors such as the opacity of the air and line of
sight. Therefore, heliographs were eventually replaced by technology that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. worked on similar principles but was easier to produce and maintain.
B. was not so constrained by environmental circumstances.
C. could be used for more than military, surveying, or forestry purposes.
D. enabled communication that didn’t require knowledge of Morse code.
Question ID 0dccbf17
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 0dccbf17
Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1893 painting The Banjo Lesson, which depicts an elderly man teaching a boy to play the banjo, is
regarded as a landmark in the history of works by Black artists in the United States. Scholars should be cautious when
ascribing political or ideological values to the painting, however: beliefs and assumptions that are commonly held now may
have been unfamiliar to Tanner and his contemporaries, and vice versa. Scholars who forget this fact when discussing The
Banjo Lesson therefore ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. risk judging Tanner’s painting by standards that may not be historically appropriate.
B. tend to conflate Tanner’s political views with those of his contemporaries.
C. forgo analyzing Tanner’s painting in favor of analyzing his political activity.
D. wrongly assume that Tanner’s painting was intended as a critique of his fellow artists.
Question ID f942646f
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: f942646f
Researchers Suchithra Rajendran and Maximilian Popfinger modeled varying levels of passenger redistribution from short-
haul flights (flights of 50 to 210 minutes, from takeoff to landing) to high-speed rail trips. Planes travel faster than trains, but
air travel typically requires 3 hours of lead time for security, baggage handling, and boarding that rail travel doesn’t, so short-
haul routes take similar amounts of time by air and by rail. However, the model suggests that as rail passenger volumes
approach current capacity limits, long lead times emerge. Therefore, for rail to remain a viable alternative to short-haul
flights, ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. rail systems should offer fewer long-haul routes and airlines should offer more long-haul routes.
B. rail systems may need to schedule additional trains for these routes.
C. security, baggage handling, and boarding procedures used by airlines may need to be implemented for rail systems.
D. passengers who travel by rail for these routes will need to accept that lead times will be similar to those for air travel.
Question ID a13c1c66
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: a13c1c66
Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to
encoding information in long-term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep for
hours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it
became so widespread in the animal kingdom. These scientists therefore imply that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. prolonged deep sleep is likely advantageous in ways that have yet to be discovered.
B. most traits perform functions that are hard to understand from an evolutionary standpoint.
C. it is more important to understand how widespread prolonged deep sleep is than to understand its function.
D. many traits that provide significant benefits for an animal also likely pose risks to that animal.
Question ID 0dba14e6
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 0dba14e6
The increased integration of digital technologies throughout the process of book creation in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries lowered the costs of book production, but those decreased costs have been most significant in the manufacturing
and distribution process, which occurs after the authoring, editing, and design of the book are complete. This suggests that
in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. digital technologies made it easier than it had been previously for authors to write very long works and get them
published.
B. customers generally expected the cost of books to decline relative to the cost of other consumer goods.
C. publishers increased the variety of their offerings by printing more unique titles but also printed fewer copies of each
title.
D. the costs of writing, editing, and designing a book were less affected by the technologies used than were the costs of
manufacturing and distributing a book.
Question ID 3f236877
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 3f236877
Ratified by more than 90 countries, the Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement ensuring that Indigenous
communities are compensated when their agricultural resources and knowledge of wild plants and animals are utilized by
agricultural corporations. However, the protocol has shortcomings. For example, it allows corporations to insist that their
agreements with communities to conduct research on the commercial uses of the communities’ resources and knowledge
remain confidential. Therefore, some Indigenous advocates express concern that the protocol may have the unintended
effect of ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. diminishing the monetary reward that corporations might derive from their agreements with Indigenous communities.
B. limiting the research that corporations conduct on the resources of the Indigenous communities with which they have
signed agreements.
C. preventing independent observers from determining whether the agreements guarantee equitable compensation for
Indigenous communities.
D. discouraging Indigenous communities from learning new methods for harvesting plants and animals from their
corporate partners.
Question ID 95dbdf51
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty
SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences
Ideas
ID: 95dbdf51
Laura Mulvey has theorized that in narrative film, shots issuing from a protagonist’s point of view compel viewers to identify
with the character. Such identification is heightened by “invisible editing,” or editing so inconspicuous that it renders cuts
between shots almost unnoticeable. Conversely, Mulvey proposes that conspicuous editing or an absence of point-of-view
shots would induce a more critical stance toward a protagonist. Consider, for example, the attic scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds, a conspicuously edited sequence of tens of shots, few of which correspond to the protagonist’s point of view.
According to Mulvey’s logic, this scene should affect viewers by ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. obscuring their awareness of the high degree of artifice involved in constructing the montage.
B. lessening their identification with the protagonist, if not alienating them from the character altogether.
C. compelling them to identify with the film’s director, whose proxy is the camera, and not with the protagonist.
D. diverting their attention away from the film’s content and toward its stylistic attributes.