Cross-Text Connections

SAT Reading and Writing· difficulty 4/5

Text 1: Neuroscientist Park argues that emotions are evolved responses with distinct neural signatures. Fear engages the amygdala, disgust the insula, joy the ventral striatum; these signatures, Park contends, reveal the basic emotion categories selected by evolution.

Text 2: Neuroscientist Singh accepts the neural data but rejects Park's interpretation. The same brain regions, she notes, activate across emotions and across cognitive tasks generally; "fear" and "disgust" overlap heavily in their neural footprints. Emotion categories, Singh argues, are constructed by language and culture from a continuous biological substrate, not read off the brain.

Based on the texts, how would Singh (Text 2) most likely respond to Park's claim?

  • A

    She would deny that the brain plays any role in emotion.

  • B

    She would accept the underlying brain data but dispute the categorical interpretation Park draws from it.

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  • C

    She would propose that emotions exist only in language and not biology.

  • D

    She would agree that each emotion has a unique neural signature.

Explanation

Singh accepts the data but disputes the categorical reading. B captures this. A, C, and D mischaracterize her.

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