- Hey y'all, my name is Prashanth Kumar, or PK,
and I'm an MCAT tutor at Shemmassian Academic Consulting.
Today we're gonna be doing a passage walkthrough
in the MCAT Psych/Soc section.
You should be taking roughly 6 1/2 minutes on this passage,
but today we're gonna be going more in depth
so you can see exactly what's going on in my head
as I take on this section.
Let's get it!
(keyboard clacking) (logo whooshing)
All right, great.
So I've got ahead and put the passage on the left
and the questions on the right.
So feel free to take a moment and pause the video
and come back to us when you're ready.
If not, let's get right into talking strategy.
For me, I like to maintain the same exact strategy
regardless of where I'm looking at,
whatever passage, whatever section.
The reason for this
is it gives me something to come back to,
regardless of whether the passage
is super easy or super hard.
Having this routine builds confidence,
and confidence is imperative for the MCAT.
Additionally, I like to read a paragraph,
write a quick three to five word summary,
and then go on to the next paragraph.
Doing this, make sure I understand
what's going on in that paragraph
before progressing to the next one.
That three to five word summary isn't too important,
but it's a quick check-in to make sure
I understand exactly what's going on.
Additionally, I'm not gonna spend too much time
on the figures on that first read,
because I don't know
what's gonna happen in the questions, right?
Maybe the figure's not even asked about.
Why would I spend more time than I have to?
And if I'm gonna have to come back,
might as well look at the question
and then come back if needed.
With that, let's get right into the passage.
"Recent studies have shown
that television can adversely impact cognitive processes
in both children and young adults.
In previous studies, researchers found
that in individuals aged six to 23,
higher than average amounts of television watching
led to an eight to 14% decrease
in the ability of participants
to quickly and correctly solve math problems.
In addition, participants were less likely
to recall list items or accurately identify emotions
on a confederate during an in-person experiment."
All right, so my question I always ask myself
at the end of a paragraph is, what's happening, right?
What is happening in this paragraph?
And so in three to five quick words or quick summaries,
easy English, what's happening?
And so the I'm gonna write question, TV on cognition, right?
So that's the question they're asking.
They're asking, is there an effect
of watching TV on cognition?
And with that, I'm not spending
too much time on the details.
I know I mentioned previous studies and all that,
but we'll come back to that if needed.
All right, onto the next paragraph.
"A group of researchers is specifically interested
in studying the effect of television on memory.
The researchers recruit at least 50 participants
in each of the following age groups,
six to eight, nine to 11, 12 to 14, and 15 through 17.
Each of the participants watches 15 hours of TV per week
as confirmed by the participants themselves and a guardian.
The participants watch a range
of television programming throughout the week."
All right, so, now what is happening in this question?
The same exact question, what's happening?
And here we see that researchers
are looking at 50 participants into age groups watching TV.
Okay.
So, same thing, right?
We're focused on what's happening in the experimental setup,
but we see that television, memory, and age groups.
So right now we're starting an experimental setup.
"To conduct the experiment,
the researchers split up the participants in each age group
into Group 1 or Group 2.
The Group 1 participants watch 15 hours of TV a week
for three consecutive weeks.
At the end of the third week,
the participants are brought into a testing center
and given a list of 20 names.
10 minutes later, they're asked to recall
as many names as possible.
The Group 1 participants then watch 15 hours of TV a week
for the next three consecutive weeks
and repeat the memory assessment.
Group 2 participants follow an identical plan
as Group 1 participants for weeks one through three.
However, during weeks four through six,
Group 2 participants are not allowed
to watch any TV during the week.
Group 2 participants complete the same memory test
as Group 1 students at the end of week three
and at the end of week six.
The results from the experiment
are shown in Figure 1
for the nine to 11 year-old age group."
All right, so right away, we see all of these details,
a super complicated experimental setup, right?
So let's think about what's happening first.
There's two groups, so I'm gonna draw what's happening,
two groups, 1 and 2.
And then, what happens?
I'm just gonna say there's a one through three
and a four through six, right?
TV, TV, they both start with TV,
and then 1 goes to TV and 2 goes to no TV, right?
I'm not gonna focus much time on this,
but this nice little diagram
gives us everything we need from that passage
for the first sort of glance.
If we need to come back to the details,
if we need to come back to the hours of TV,
we know where to come back to,
but with that, we can go right onto our figure.
And we see with our figure that there's a graph.
I want you to give a quick look at the axes,
the legend maybe, but nothing too significant.
We see that there's two tests on that X axis
and then on the Y it's the number of names recalled
and then it's color coded by the groups.
So right away, we have a quick understanding of the graph,
not gonna spend more than a few seconds on it,
and we're ready to go right into our questions.
So let's do it.
One, in a follow-up study,
researchers found that participants
are best able to recall names at the end of the list
better than names at the beginning of the list.
This is known as, A, recency effect,
B, proactive interference,
C, primacy effect, or D, retroactive interference.
All right, so right away we see
this is a standalone question,
so we don't have to spend too much time
going through the passage.
But this requires us to know
the terms that we're talking about.
So if we're able to do what?
We're able to recall names at the end of the list
better than the beginning, what is that?
If we have a list of numbers like one, two, three,
seven, eight, ten, right?
It's saying we're gonna know these guys
more than these guys.
All right.
So if we're looking at the later numbers,
that's gonna be called the recency effect, right?
It's more recent in our memory
so we're gonna remember it much better.
That is opposite to the primacy effect.
The primacy effect would say
the first numbers we say out loud
or the first numbers in the list
we're gonna remember better.
And hat would be these ones up here,
but we're not focused on that,
so we're gonna eliminate C.
Now we have two types of interferences,
and these are very important terminologies, often confusing.
Interference is the idea of some memories
getting in the way of understanding other memories
or helping remember other memories.
And the way you remember which is which
is a simple little trick, right?
If you're looking retroactive,
retro, '80s, old timey, that type of vibe,
we're looking backwards, okay?
So, I'm gonna write new memories
and then old memories.
If we're having retroactive interference,
we're looking backwards so our new memories
are impacting our old memories.
So they're getting in the way
of remembering old facts, right?
And so this is a common thing.
After you've like lived in a new house
or new building for a while,
you start to forget that old address, for example.
And so that's because you've spent so much time
memorizing this new sort of address.
The proactive interference is the opposite, right?
To be proactive you're gonna have,
I'm gonna do this one in blue,
proactive is looking forward,
you're trying to be proactive in the future.
So that means old memories
are gonna get in the way of new memories.
So with that, we know that old memories
would get in the way of new memories,
and that's often like,
oh, I can't remember exactly what my phone number is
because I've spent so much time
memorizing my old phone number.
And so with that, we know that these two aren't true
because it doesn't say anything
about old memories getting in the way of new memories,
rather than saying we're able to recall names
at the end of the list
better than the beginning of the list.
So with that, we're one for one
and we're ready to go onto the next question.
And my one tip for these sections is that
if you see all these terms,
you should know all the terms
in the answer choices by heart.
The AMC pulls from a pool of sort of terms.
If you know all the terms,
it's gonna make your life so much easier on test day.
So onto to question number two.
Which of the following do the researchers
not account for in the study?
Is it A, intergroup variability, B, amount of TV watched,
C, genre of TV watched, or D, age?
All right, so right away we remember our second paragraph,
we're talking about our second paragraph,
and we see that we're looking at
the effects of television on our memory
and we split them into these age groups,
six to eight, nine through 11, 15 to 17.
And so if we're accounting for in the study,
we're looking for something,
that means we should be looking for something,
we're looking for something
that's not accounted for in the study, right?
So we're looking for something
that's not mentioned as a part of the study significantly.
And so right away we see
age is one of the things that is mentioned.
They stratify by age, so already we're good to go.
Next, we see each of the participants
watches 15 hours to TV per week
as confirmed by the participants.
So what else is controlled or looked at by the study?
The amount of TV watched, right?
This is a fixed amount that they put
into the study experimental design,
so we know it's accounted for.
Next we see that the participants watch
a range of television programming throughout the week.
So if it's a range of television programming
then it's not accounted for in the study.
We don't know what the participants are watching,
we don't know what they're looking at.
So that means the genre
is not being accounted for in the study.
Now we come to this word intergroup variability,
and that means, okay,
we have these Groups 1 and 2, right?
How do we make sure that we're counting
for any individualized differences
between Group 1 and Group 2,
whether some of them might have lower memory
or some of them might be higher memory just in general?
So the way we're looking at intergroup variability
is that this first phase,
we have these first phase
where Group 1 participants watch 15 hours,
and then Group 2 participants
also follow an identical plan for the first weeks.
They're both watching TV
in that first one through three weeks
to control for that intergroup variability.
We wanna know, oh, do these students
have higher memory in general
or lower memory in general in this group?
And by doing this, we're able to account for that.
So intergroup variability is just looking at that.
We have two groups,
is there any differences in the groups themselves
without the experimental design getting into play?
So with that, we're two for two.
All right, question number three.
Which of the follow conclusions
is not supported by the results shown in Figure 1?
Is it A, Group 1 and 2 participants
recall a similar number of names
when they watch 15 hours of TV a week,
B, retroactive interference prevents Group 1 participants
from performing as well as Group 2 participants
on the week six test,
C, the ability of Group 2 participants to recall names
improved on the week six test,
or D, the number of names recalled by participants
is associated with time spent watching TV?
All right, so this requires us to go to Figure 1, right?
It tells us that we're looking for Figure 1
and which of the following conclusions
are not supported by the results.
So not supported,
we're looking for something that is not supported.
So let's start with A.
Group 1 and 2 participants recall a similar number of names
when they watch 15 hours of TV a week.
So right away,
when we see Group 1 participants
watching 15 hours a week,
which column are we looking at?
We're looking at this one, right?
They start by watching 15 hours a week,
and week two participants also watch
15 hours a week at this point.
So we have to look at these two and say,
are they watching a similar amount of TV?
Yes, there's no statistical significance in between there.
And so already we can eliminate A,
because they do recall a similar number of names
when they're both watching 15 hours a TV a week.
All right, now onto B.
Retroactive interference prevents Group 1 participants
from performing as well as Group 2 participants
on the week six test.
Okay, so we do see
that there is some sort of difference, right?
Retroactive interference prevents Group 1,
is Group 1 participants performing as well
as Group 2 participants on the week two test?
No, they're not.
We see that there's a statistical difference
between Group 1 and Group 2.
So already there is a change
from the week three test to the week six test.
But what does that mean?
We can't bring any additional information into passage.
While there is a change in the amount of TV being watched,
or the amount of names being recalled,
can we attribute this to retroactive interference?
We can't, we don't know that this is true.
So for now we're gonna mark this.
It just says retroactive interference
prevents Group 1 participants.
What if it's not retroactive interference?
What if it's the fact that TV is changing
the firing of neuron in your brain?
What if it's the fact that these people
at week three through six
are not focused on these memory-oriented tasks
when they're watching TV?
We don't know the cause and we can't assume the cause,
so we can't choose B as our supported yet.
All right, C.
The ability of Group 2 participants to recall names
improved on the week six test.
We see that significant difference, right?
We see that change of going from here to here,
so we're able to eliminate C as our answer choice.
All right, D.
The number of names recalled by participants
is associated with time spent watching TV.
So same thing, right?
If we see a statistically significant change
between two groups,
we're seeing some sort of association.
Do we know whether it's a strong association
or a weak association?
No, we don't,
but we do see that there is some improvement
in Group 2 when they stop watching TV.
So we can eliminate D.
And so with that, we know B is our strongest answer,
though retroactive interference is not mentioned
and we can't bring outside information into the passage.
So just because Group 1 participants
perform as well as Group 2 participants,
don't perform as well,
we can't say it's because of retroactive interference.
So with that, we've used process of elimination,
we've also used some pieces of information in the passage
which is a two-pronged approach
to getting a question right.
Onto the final question.
Which of the follow best describes
this type of study described in the passage?
Is it A, an observational study, B, an experimental study,
C, a case study, or D, a survey study.
All right, so let's think,
what are each of these studies?
Remember when I said,
if a question asks a term-based question,
we need to know all the terms from the answer choices.
So first let's start with what is an observational study?
An observational study is something
where there's no intervention into the population, right?
You're just looking at a group of population or people
and we're describing effects
or describing some sort of pattern in the population.
So we can eliminate A,
because we have an experimental setup,
we have some intervention.
And so B is looking like our best answer, right?
We have an intervention,
AKA the number of hours of TV watched,
that we're looking at the dependent variable,
which is the number of names recalled,
so this is a classic experimental study.
C, a case study, is usually looking at one
or maybe a few individual people with specific cases, right?
So a case study is often looking at someone
with a specific prognosis or a specific type of disease.
So that is not the case here,
because, again, we have more than a one or two people
and we're not doing a specific description
of that one person,
we're doing a group-based experimental study.
And finally, a survey study
is something where you ask participants a bunch of questions
and they analyze the results after that.
So that's a sort of survey,
distribute results type of thing,
and that is not the case here,
we're giving out no survey.
And with that, we're four for four,
we crushed it.
Great work, team!
All right, great work, team.
We crushed another psych/soc passage together.
Kudos for you for getting it done.
Remember, if there's terms used in the answer choices,
it's your job to memorize them
by the end of the passage.
Get them done, learn them by heart
so you can crush the actual test.
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Happy studying, and let's get it!
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