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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 26)

Drill 26 · Reading & Writing · Hard Inferences

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 26) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Inferences. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

These hard SAT inference questions ask you to complete short academic passages by choosing the conclusion the text best supports. The right answer stays inside the evidence; the wrong ones tend to overreach, reverse the logic, or wander off the passage's point.

Questions & Explanations

Text
To catalog the night-flying insects of a meadow, a team ran a single lighted trap for several nights and reported the captured species as the meadow's nocturnal insect life. The lamp drew in a heavy, varied haul, and each specimen was identified with care. Yet insects differ sharply in how they respond to light: many moths and beetles steer toward a bright lamp, but a great number of other night fliers ignore artificial light entirely and would never drift toward the trap, however abundant they were in the surrounding air. Because the trap could register only insects that fly toward a lamp, its portrait of the meadow's nocturnal insects ______

Question 1. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) proves that the species it failed to capture must be genuinely rare across the whole of the surrounding meadow.
  • B) would probably be corrected simply by running the same lighted trap for a longer stretch of summer nights.
  • C) is worthless for study, since a survey taken with a lamp can never be compared against one taken by any other method.
  • D) likely omits the many night fliers that ignore artificial light, since such insects would never approach the lamp to be counted. ✓

Explanation: (D) The lamp can register only insects that steer toward it, and many night fliers ignore artificial light and would never approach, so a tally built from the lamp cannot stand for the whole nocturnal community; the choice names that behavioral coverage gap. (A) treats the uncaptured species as rare, but they were merely not drawn to light. (B) blames the trap's duration, yet more nights with the same lamp would still miss the insects that never approach it. (C) calls the result worthless and beyond comparison, overstating a fixable limit the passage presents as informative.

Text
On one common account of caricature, the form works by seizing on a feature the subject genuinely possesses and enlarging it past life, so that viewers recognize the person in the very distortion; on this account, a drawing that magnifies a trait the subject does not have at all cannot function as caricature of that person, since there is no real feature for the viewer to recognize in the exaggeration. Consider a portraitist who draws a public figure with an enormous jutting chin, though that figure is in fact notably weak-chinned. If the account is right, a critic applying it to this drawing should conclude that the drawing ______

Question 2. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) fails as caricature of that figure on the account, since it invents a jutting chin the figure lacks rather than exaggerating a real feature. ✓
  • B) succeeds as caricature especially well, because inventing a bold and unexpected new feature frees the artist entirely from the plain facts of the face.
  • C) lies outside anything the account was built to judge, since a drawing of an imagined chin is simply not the account's concern.
  • D) counts as caricature on the account, given that any portrait drawn with a single wildly enlarged feature meets what the account asks.

Explanation: (A) The account makes caricature depend on enlarging a feature the subject really has, and here the figure is weak-chinned while the drawing gives the figure a jutting chin, so the exaggeration seizes on nothing real for the viewer to recognize and the drawing fails as caricature of that figure. The choice applies the rule as stated. (B) says inventing a feature works better, but the account requires a real one, so it reverses the standard. (C) places the case outside the account, yet the account is offered to judge exactly such exaggerations. (D) claims any lone enlarged feature suffices, ignoring the account's demand that the feature be genuinely possessed.

Text
Marine biologists tracking a coral reef saw the number of large food fish climb sharply along one stretch across a single year. That year the stretch had been closed to all fishing, and the team wondered whether the closure let the fish rebuild or whether fish were simply becoming more plentiful across the whole reef system that season. They monitored a second stretch of the same reef, alike in depth, coral cover, and currents, that stayed open to fishing over the same months. There the count of large fish held level, showing none of the rise seen in the closed stretch. Because only the closed stretch gained fish, the fishing closure ______

Question 3. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) clearly had no effect on the fish, since large-fish numbers had in truth been climbing steadily along both stretches for years.
  • B) is a more plausible cause of the rise than a reef-wide good year for fish, given that only the closed stretch gained. ✓
  • C) probably counted for far less than the extra shade cast over the closed stretch by a stand of mangroves along its shore.
  • D) drew the additional fish mainly because the open comparison stretch lay over markedly deeper water with far weaker currents.

Explanation: (B) Large fish rose only in the stretch closed to fishing, while a matched open stretch alike in depth, coral, and currents held level over the same months, so a reef-wide good season cannot explain a gain that appeared in just one place, and the closure best fits the pattern. The choice ties the rise to the closure without calling it the sole cause. (A) claims both stretches had long been rising, contradicting the level count in the open stretch. (C) credits mangrove shade found nowhere in the passage. (D) blames a depth-and-current gap, but the stretches were matched on exactly those, so they were held constant.

Text
A physiologist studied how a dissolved stimulant affects the tiny crustacean known as the water flea. Groups of water fleas were held in water carrying the stimulant at four set levels, from none through a low and a middling dose to a high one, while temperature, light, and oxygen were kept the same across all groups and every animal came from one hatch. Heart rate rose with each step up in dose: the high-dose group beat fastest, the middling dose gave a middling rate, the low dose a slight lift, and the no-dose group beat at the ordinary resting rate. Because the pulse climbed in step with each larger dose, the faster heart rate ______

Question 4. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) shows only that warmer water quickens a water flea's pulse, a well-known effect seen whenever the surrounding temperature rises.
  • B) cannot really be linked to the stimulant at all, since no true resting baseline was measured against which any lift could be judged.
  • C) is plausibly tied to the stimulant rather than to temperature or oxygen, since the pulse rose in step with each larger dose. ✓
  • D) would probably reverse entirely if the very same doses were delivered to the animals in a slightly larger holding tank.

Explanation: (C) Heart rate climbed step by step from the no-dose baseline to the high dose while temperature, light, and oxygen were held constant across groups, and no constant factor can create a gradient keyed to dose, so the rising pulse tracks the stimulant. The choice ties it to the dose without claiming it is the only influence on heart rate. (A) blames warmer water, but temperature was held the same for every group. (B) says no baseline existed, yet the no-dose group is exactly that baseline. (D) predicts a reversal with tank size, which the passage never raises.

Text
A scholar sketched a medieval poet's range and interests using the verses gathered in a popular later anthology, treating that selection as the body of the poet's work. The anthology preserves a generous run of the poems and has kept them readable for centuries. But an anthology is a chosen thing: its compiler kept the poems that suited a particular taste and passed over others, and several of the poet's works survive in scattered single copies that the anthology never included at all. Because the scholar's sample was shaped by what one compiler chose to gather, a portrait of the poet's range built from the anthology alone ______

Question 5. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) likely skews toward the compiler's taste, since poems the anthology passed over drop out of the picture even where they survive elsewhere. ✓
  • B) must be the fullest portrait obtainable, because an anthology that has lasted for centuries has plainly saved everything of any real value.
  • C) is spoiled only by the sheer age of the surviving copies, whose worn and faded pages leave the poet's true range impossible to judge.
  • D) probably reverses the poet's actual interests, since compilers of anthologies tend to prefer the poems a poet cared least about.

Explanation: (A) The anthology keeps only the poems that suited one compiler's taste and omits others that still survive elsewhere, so a range built from that selection reflects the chooser as much as the poet; the choice names that survivorship gap. (B) calls the anthology the fullest possible portrait, but omitted poems survive, so it did not preserve everything. (C) blames the pages' age, while the flaw is which poems were gathered. (D) claims the selection inverts the poet's interests, overreaching a bias that skews rather than reverses the picture.