Question ID 15c0ed26

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences Hard

Ideas

ID: 15c0ed26
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is projected to maintain operation until at least 2030, but it has already
revolutionized high-resolution imaging of solar-system bodies in visible and ultraviolet (UV) light
wavelengths, notwithstanding that only about 6% of the bodies imaged by the HST are within the solar
system. NASA researcher Cindy L. Young and colleagues assert that a new space telescope dedicated
exclusively to solar-system observations would permit an extensive survey of minor solar-system bodies and
long-term UV observation to discern how solar-system bodies change over time. Young and colleagues’
recommendation therefore implies that the HST ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. will likely continue to be used primarily to observe objects outside the solar system.

B. will no longer be used to observe solar system objects if the telescope recommended by Young and
colleagues is deployed.

C. can be modified to observe the features of solar system objects that are of interest to Young and
colleagues.

D. lacks the sensors to observe the wavelengths of light needed to discern how solar system bodies change
over time.
Question ID 0a017199
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and Hard
Ideas Details

ID: 0a017199
Some animal-behavior studies involve observing wild animals in their natural habitat, and some involve
capturing wild animals and observing them in a laboratory. Each approach has advantages over the other. In
wild studies, researchers can more easily presume that the animals are behaving normally, and in lab studies,
researchers can more easily control factors that might affect the results. But if, for example, the results from
a wild study and a lab study of Western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) contradict each other, one or
both of the studies must have failed to account for some factor that was relevant to the birds’ behavior.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A. When the results of a natural-habitat study and those from a lab study of a wild animal such as the
Western scrub-jay conflict, the study in the natural habitat is more likely than the lab study to have
accurate results.

B. Studying wild animals such as the Western scrub-jay in both their natural habitat and lab settings is likely
to yield conflicting results that researchers cannot fully resolve.

C. Wild animals such as the Western scrub-jay can be effectively studied in their natural habitat and in the
lab, but each approach has drawbacks that could affect the accuracy of the findings.

D. Differing results between natural-habitat and lab studies of wild animals such as the Western scrub-jay
are a strong indication that both of the studies had design flaws that affected the accuracy of their
results.
Question ID e0d51f42
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences Hard

Ideas

ID: e0d51f42
Ancestral Puebloans, the civilization from which present-day Pueblo tribes descended, emerged as early as
1500 B.C.E. in an area of what is now the southwestern United States and dispersed suddenly in the late
1200s C.E., abandoning established villages with systems for farming crops and turkeys. Recent analysis
comparing turkey remains at Mesa Verde, one such village in southern Colorado, to samples from modern
turkey populations in the Rio Grande Valley of north central New Mexico determined that the latter birds
descended in part from turkeys cultivated at Mesa Verde, with shared genetic markers appearing only after
1280. Thus, researchers concluded that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. conditions of the terrains in the Rio Grande Valley and Mesa Verde had greater similarities in the past than
they do today.

B. some Ancestral Puebloans migrated to the Rio Grande Valley in the late 1200s and carried farming
practices with them.

C. Indigenous peoples living in the Rio Grande Valley primarily planted crops and did not cultivate turkeys
before 1280.

D. the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde likely adopted the farming practices of Indigenous peoples living
in other regions.
Question ID e55ded58
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Command of Hard

Ideas Evidence

ID: e55ded58
Black beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are a nutritionally dense food, but they are difficult to digest in part because
of their high levels of soluble fiber and compounds like raffinose. They also contain antinutrients like tannins
and trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with the body’s ability to extract nutrients from foods. In a research
article, Marisela Granito and Glenda Álvarez from Simón Bolívar University in Venezuela claim that inducing
fermentation of black beans using lactic acid bacteria improves the digestibility of the beans and makes
them more nutritious.

Which finding from Granito and Álvarez’s research, if true, would most directly support their claim?

A. When cooked, fermented beans contained significantly more trypsin inhibitors and tannins but
significantly less soluble fiber and raffinose than nonfermented beans.

B. Fermented beans contained significantly less soluble fiber and raffinose than nonfermented beans, and
when cooked, the fermented beans also displayed a significant reduction in trypsin inhibitors and tannins.

C. When the fermented beans were analyzed, they were found to contain two microorganisms, Lactobacillus
casei and Lactobacillus plantarum, that are theorized to increase the amount of nitrogen absorbed by the
gut after eating beans.

D. Both fermented and nonfermented black beans contained significantly fewer trypsin inhibitors and
tannins after being cooked at high pressure.
Question ID e4466b2f
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and Hard
Ideas Details

ID: e4466b2f
The following text is adapted from Countee Cullen’s 1926 poem “Thoughts in a Zoo.”

They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,

Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours
Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange
Save that his cages have a larger range.
That lion with his lordly, untamed heart
Has in some man his human counterpart,
Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped,
But in the stifling flesh securely trapped.

Based on the text, what challenge do humans sometimes experience?

A. They cannot effectively tame certain wild animals because of a lack of compassion.

B. They cannot focus on setting attainable goals because of a lack of motivation.

C. They quickly become frustrated when faced with difficult tasks because of a lack of self-control.

D. They have aspirations that cannot be fulfilled because of certain limitations.

Question ID 12b370c2
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and Hard
Ideas Details

ID: 12b370c2
Disco remains one of the most ridiculed popular music genres of the late twentieth century. But as scholars
have argued, the genre is far less superficial than many people believe. Take the case of disco icon Donna
Summer: she may have been associated with popular songs about love and heartbreak (subjects hardly
unique to disco, by the way), but like many Black women singers before her, much of her music also reflects
concerns about community and identity. These concerns are present in many of the genre’s greatest songs,
and they generally don’t require much digging to reveal.

What does the text most strongly suggest about the disco genre?
A. It has been unjustly ignored by most scholars despite the importance of the themes addressed by many
of the genre’s songs.

B. It evolved over time from a superficial genre focused on romance to a genre focused on more serious
concerns.

C. It has been unfairly dismissed for the inclusion of subject matter that is also found in other musical
genres.

D. It gave rise to a Black women’s musical tradition that has endured even though the genre itself faded in
the late twentieth century.
Question ID 349fa4d2
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences Hard

Ideas

ID: 349fa4d2
Tatiana R. Feuerborn and colleagues analyzed the genomes of more than a hundred domesticated dogs from
sites in Siberia dating from 11,000 years ago to the present. They found that the dogs constituted a
genetically isolated population of Arctic breeds until approximately 2,000 years ago, at which point there was
substantial interbreeding with Near Eastern dog breeds. Furthermore, beginning around 2,000 years ago,
some sites contain artifacts consistent with a Near East origin, like glass beads, but the people show no
evidence of having traveled extensively outside Siberia. From this, Feuerborn and colleagues concluded that
around 2,000 years ago ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. dogs and artifacts like glass beads began to be transported from the Near East to Siberia.

B. people from Siberia began to reach the Near East, where they acquired dogs and artifacts such as glass
beads.

C. glass beads and other artifacts from the Near East began to be exchanged for dogs from Siberia.

D. dogs from the Near East began to be exchanged for glass beads and other artifacts from Siberia.
Question ID 66b10ad8
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences Hard

Ideas

ID: 66b10ad8
A team of biologists led by Jae-Hoon Jung, Antonio D. Barbosa, and Stephanie Hutin investigated the
mechanism that allows Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) plants to accelerate flowering at high
temperatures. They replaced the protein ELF3 in the plants with a similar protein found in another species
(stiff brome) that, unlike A. thaliana, displays no acceleration in flowering with increased temperature. A
comparison of unmodified A. thaliana plants with the altered plants showed no difference in flowering at 22°
Celsius, but at 27° Celsius, the unmodified plants exhibited accelerated flowering while the altered ones did
not, which suggests that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. temperature-sensitive accelerated flowering is unique to A. thaliana.

B. A. thaliana increases ELF3 production as temperatures rise.

C. ELF3 enables A. thaliana to respond to increased temperatures.

D. temperatures of at least 22° Celsius are required for A. thaliana to flower.

Question ID e3b5bb66
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and Hard
Ideas Details

ID: e3b5bb66
The most recent iteration of the immersive theater experience Sleep No More, which premiered in New York
City in 2011, transforms its performance space—a five-story warehouse—into a 1930s-era hotel. Audience
members, who wander through the labyrinthine venue at their own pace and follow the actors as they play
out simultaneous, interweaving narrative loops, confront the impossibility of experiencing the production in
its entirety. The play’s refusal of narrative coherence thus hinges on the sense of spatial fragmentation that
the venue’s immense and intricate layout generates.

What does the text most strongly suggest about Sleep No More’s use of its performance space?

A. The choice of a New York City venue likely enabled the play’s creators to experiment with the use of
theatrical space in a way that venues from earlier productions could not.

B. Audience members likely find the experience of the play disappointing because they generally cannot
make their way through the entire venue.

C. The production’s dependence on a particular performance environment would likely make it difficult to
reproduce exactly in a different theatrical space.

D. Audience members who navigate the space according to a recommended itinerary will likely have a better
grasp of the play’s narrative than audience members who depart from that itinerary.
Question ID d2fbb566
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and Hard
Ideas Details

ID: d2fbb566
In superfluorescence, electrical charges known as dipoles emit light in synchronized bursts so intense that
they are visible to the eye. Until recently, this phenomenon has only been observed at extremely cold
temperatures because dipoles cannot synchronize at higher temperatures. But in a study, Melike Biliroglu and
colleagues observed superfluorescence at room temperature in thin films made of perovskite and other
similarly crystalline materials; the researchers propose that the formation of shock-absorbing quasiparticles
called polarons in the material protects dipoles from thermal interference.

Based on the text, how are polarons believed to be involved in the superfluorescence observed in Biliroglu
and colleagues’ study?
A. Polarons enable superfluorescent bursts to cross from one crystalline material to another.

B. Polarons allow for the dipoles to synchronize despite higher temperatures.

C. Polarons accelerate the dipoles’ release of superfluorescent bursts.

D. Polarons decrease the intensity of the superfluorescent burst.

Question ID e752ee68
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and Hard
Ideas Details

ID: e752ee68
The following text is adapted from Lewis Carroll’s 1889 satirical novel Sylvie and Bruno. A crowd has
gathered outside a room belonging to the Warden, an official who reports to the Lord Chancellor.
One man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I
could make out) “Who roar for the Sub-Warden?” Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden,
or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting “Bread!” and some “Taxes!”, but no one seemed to know
what it was they really wanted.
All this I saw from the open window of the Warden’s breakfast-saloon, looking across the shoulder of the
Lord Chancellor.
“What can it all mean?” he kept repeating to himself. “I never heard such shouting before—and at this time
of the morning, too! And with such unanimity!”

Based on the text, how does the Lord Chancellor respond to the crowd?
A. He asks about the meaning of the crowd’s shouting, even though he claims to know what the crowd
wants.

B. He indicates a desire to speak to the crowd, even though the crowd has asked to speak to the Sub-
Warden.

C. He expresses sympathy for the crowd’s demands, even though the crowd’s shouting annoys him.

D. He describes the crowd as being united, even though the crowd clearly appears otherwise.
Question ID 787729f7
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Information and Inferences Hard

Ideas

ID: 787729f7
Researchers recently found that disruptions to an enjoyable experience, like a short series of advertisements
during a television show, often increase viewers’ reported enjoyment. Suspecting that disruptions to an
unpleasant experience would have the opposite effect, the researchers had participants listen to
construction noise for 30 minutes and anticipated that those whose listening experience was frequently
interrupted with short breaks of silence would thus ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. find the disruptions more irritating as time went on.

B. rate the listening experience as more negative than those whose listening experience was uninterrupted.

C. rate the experience of listening to construction noise as lasting for less time than it actually lasted.

D. perceive the volume of the construction noise as growing softer over time.