Question ID 7b820c8c

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 7b820c8c
Overgrazing by purple sea urchins has caused many kelp forests along North America’s west coast to be replaced by
urchin barrens—areas stripped of vegetation and covered in purple sea urchins. Urchins in barrens persist in a state of
starvation that lessens their nutritional value—and thus their appeal—to many predators. Sarah Gravem and colleagues
placed sunflower sea stars, a once-abundant predator species suffering massive population declines in recent years, in
aquariums that each contained a nutritionally poor and a nutritionally rich purple sea urchin. The researchers found that
the sea stars selected the nutritionally rich urchin in 42.7% of trials and the nutritionally poor urchin in 37.5% of trials,
suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

sunflower sea stars are willing to hunt sea urchins, but if given a choice, they will prey on other more nutritious
A. marine animals instead.

sunflower sea stars are reluctant to feed on both nutritionally poor and nutritionally rich sea urchins and are
B. therefore unlikely to thrive in kelp forests.

sunflower sea stars are less likely to consume sea urchins in barrens than other species of sea stars are, putting
C. sunflower sea stars at a high risk of extinction.

sunflower sea stars do not always avoid foraging on nutritionally poor sea urchins, making sunflower sea star
D. population recovery a potentially important tool for controlling urchin barrens.
Question ID 9f90e548
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 9f90e548
Some Astyanax mexicanus, a river-dwelling fish found in northeast Mexico, have colonized caves in the region. Although
there is little genetic difference between river and cave A. mexicanus and all members of the species can emit the same
sounds, biologist Carole Hyacinthe and colleagues found that the context and significance of those sounds vary by
location—e.g., the click that river-dwelling A. mexicanus use to signal aggression is used by cave dwellers when foraging
—and the acoustic properties of cave fish sounds show some cave-specific variations as well. Hyacinthe and
colleagues note that differences in sonic communication could accumulate to the point of inhibiting interbreeding
among fish from different locations, suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

although A. mexicanus living in rivers are genetically similar to those living in caves, river fish rely on sonic
A. communication less than cave fish do.

although A. mexicanus is a single species at present, it could be in the process of splitting into distinct populations
B. with different characteristics.

although all A. mexicanus emit sounds, the fish living in rivers produce some sounds that the fish living in caves do
C. not, and vice versa.

although A. mexicanus from different locations can interbreed currently, river fish and cave fish are sufficiently
D. genetically distinct that they can be considered separate species.
Question ID 7a6ff57e
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 7a6ff57e
A main goal of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an arts organization founded in
1965, is to advance new works by Black musicians. The AACM achieves this goal in part by focusing on young artists.
By having established musicians and composers serve as mentors, the AACM gives young artists the benefits of expert
technical training and creative guidance. Numerous organizations offer similar kinds of support to new generations of
painters, writers, and other artists, suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. artists of all ages benefit more from technical training than from creative guidance.

many arts organizations recognize the importance of providing opportunities for young artists to learn from
B. experienced mentors.

C. most established artists could become even better artists by serving as mentors.

D. finding a mentor is more important for musicians than it is for painters, writers, and other types of artists.
Question ID d6d89e9f
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: d6d89e9f
Among social animals that care for their young, such as chickens, macaque monkeys, and humans, newborns appear to
show an innate attraction to faces and face-like stimuli. Elisabetta Versace and her colleagues used an image of three
black dots arranged in the shape of eyes and a nose or mouth to test whether this trait also occurs in Testudo tortoises,
which live alone and do not engage in parental care. They found that tortoise hatchlings showed a significant
preference for the image, suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

face-like stimuli are likely perceived as harmless by newborns of social species that practice parental care but as
A. threatening by newborns of solitary species without parental care.

researchers should not assume that an innate attraction to face-like stimuli is necessarily an adaptation related to
B. social interaction or parental care.

researchers can assume that the attraction to face-like stimuli that is seen in social species that practice parental
C. care is learned rather than innate.

D. newly hatched Testudo tortoises show a stronger preference for face-like stimuli than adult Testudo tortoises do.
Question ID 94216456
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 94216456
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?

those farmers learned the techniques from other people who were more directly influenced by Haudenosaunee
A. practices.

the crops typically cultivated by Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States were not well suited to
B. Haudenosaunee farming techniques.

C. Haudenosaunee farming techniques were widely used in regions outside the northeastern United States.

Euro-American farmers only began to recognize the benefits of Haudenosaunee farming techniques late in the
D. nineteenth century.
Question ID 6d34bc11
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 6d34bc11
Some ethicists hold that the moral goodness of an individual’s actions depends solely on whether the actions
themselves are good, irrespective of the context in which they are carried out. Philosopher L. Sebastian Purcell has
shown that surviving works of Aztec (Nahua) philosophy express a very different view. Purcell reveals that these works
posit an ethical system in which an individual’s actions are judged in light of how well they accord with the individual’s
role in society and how well they contribute to the community. To the extent that these works are representative of
Aztec thought, Purcell’s analysis suggests that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

the Aztecs would have disputed the idea that the morality of an individual’s actions can be assessed by appealing to
A. standards of behavior that are independent of the individual’s social circumstances.

the Aztecs would not have accepted the notion that the morality of an individual’s actions can be fairly evaluated by
B. people who do not live in the same society as that individual.

actions by members of Aztec society who contributed a great deal to their community could be judged as morally
C. good even if those actions were inconsistent with behaviors the Aztecs regarded as good in all contexts.

similar actions performed by people in different social roles in Aztec society would have been regarded as morally
D. equivalent unless those actions led to different outcomes for the community.
Question ID 76543181
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 76543181
Euphorbia esula (leafy spurge) is a Eurasian plant that has become invasive in North America, where it displaces native
vegetation and sickens cattle. E. esula can be controlled with chemical herbicides, but that approach can also kill
harmless plants nearby. Recent research on introducing engineered DNA into plant species to inhibit their reproduction
may offer a path toward exclusively targeting E. esula, consequently ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. making individual E. esula plants more susceptible to existing chemical herbicides.

B. enhancing the ecological benefits of E. esula in North America.

C. enabling cattle to consume E. esula without becoming sick.

D. reducing invasive E. esula numbers without harming other organisms.

Question ID 63589002
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 63589002
Herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs could grow more than 100 feet long and weigh up to 80 tons, and some researchers
have attributed the evolution of sauropods to such massive sizes to increased plant production resulting from high
levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Mesozoic era. However, there is no evidence of significant spikes in
carbon dioxide levels coinciding with relevant periods in sauropod evolution, such as when the first large sauropods
appeared, when several sauropod lineages underwent further evolution toward gigantism, or when sauropods reached
their maximum known sizes, suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide affected different sauropod lineages differently.

B. the evolution of larger body sizes in sauropods did not depend on increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher when the largest known sauropods lived than it was when the first
C. sauropods appeared.

sauropods probably would not have evolved to such immense sizes if atmospheric carbon dioxide had been even
D. slightly higher.
Question ID 1d2bce30
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 1d2bce30
In a three-year study of parasitic infections by Anomotaenia brevis tapeworms in Temnothorax nylanderi ants,
entomologist Susanne Foitzik and colleagues found something unexpected: rather than reducing its host’s fitness, as is
typical of parasites, A. brevis greatly extends the lifespan of a T. nylanderi worker ant and seems to halt the effects of
aging. Furthermore, those infected receive special treatment, ceasing their share of labor to sustain the colony and
remaining in the nest as uninfected workers feed, groom, and transport them. By contrast, the researchers observed
that uninfected workers in parasitized colonies have shortened lifespans, most likely because the ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

uninfected workers are at high risk for direct exposure to A. brevis in the course of providing social care to the
A. infected workers in the nest.

need to compensate for reduced contributions within the colony while also caring for infected workers is
B. burdensome to the uninfected workers.

high level of activity maintained by the uninfected workers makes them better able than infected workers to quickly
C. disperse when the nest is attacked by a predator.

average lifespan of T. nylanderi worker ants in colonies without parasitic activity typically falls well below three
D. years, the range covered by the study.
Question ID bc94fc65
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: bc94fc65
Dutch painters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often showed tables filled with large wheels of cheese or
carved shards of butter. Some art historians, noting that dairy products were a major component of the Dutch diet,
interpret these depictions as reflections of everyday Dutch eating habits. However, a group of researchers recently
reviewed hundreds of food-related paintings and found that lemons—which could only be acquired in the Netherlands at
great cost, since they had to be imported from warmer climates—feature in Dutch paintings of the period more than
three times as frequently as dairy products do, thereby casting doubt on the idea that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. dairy products were a more significant component of the Dutch diet of the period than lemons were.

food was a more popular subject among Dutch painters than it was among painters from other countries at the
B. time.

depictions of food in Dutch paintings of the period should be taken as realistic representations of Dutch eating
C. habits.

Dutch painters of the period may have depicted foods for symbolic reasons rather than to show what Dutch people
D. typically ate.