A group of children of various ages was read stories in which people caused harm, some of those people doing so intentionally and some accidentally. When asked about appropriate punishments for those who had caused harm, the younger children, unlike the older ones, assigned punishments that did not vary according to whether the harm was done intentionally or accidentally. Younger children, then, do not regard people’s intentions as relevant to punishment. Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the conclusion above?
(A) In interpreting these stories, the listeners had to draw on a relatively mature sense of human psychology in order to tell whether harm was produced intentionally or accidentally.
(B) In these stories, the severity of the harm produced was clearly stated.
(C) Younger children are as likely to produce harm unintentionally as are older children.
(D) The younger children assigned punishments that varied according to the severity of the harm done by the agents in the stories.
本GMAT逻辑题的正确答案为A,但在GMAT考试进行选择时我们会发现A中所涉及到的关键词最少,所以这个答案也是最容易忽略掉的。但是通过阅读我们不难发现,A答案传达的意思是年纪小一些的孩子可能不能区分故事中的坏事是否是有意造成的,因此即使年纪小一些的孩子确实认为人们的意愿是相关因素,他们在这里也可能不能够应用这项标准,通过这样的理解,我们可以知道A削弱了对于该结论的支持。
选项B和E是对该结论的支持,起码不会反对该结论,所以容易被排除。
选项C和D最容易干扰解题思路,因为他们都带有关键词,但是由于其论述对结论没有什么影响,相对于A而言也不是理想的答案。