CAT 2020 Question Paper | VARC Slot 1

CAT Previous Year Paper | CAT VARC Questions | Question 20

Para Summary type of questions are trickier than you expect it to be. In the CAT Previous Year Papers, we saw that there were 3 questions on an average per slot in Para Summary. Though CAT 2020 saw a reduction of questions from 34 to 26, the average no. of questions remained the same for Para Summary. Since it is trickier, and carries a negative marking, it will be wiser to attempt it after the other parts of VA like Sentence Elimination and Sentence Rearrangement. We can expect atleast 1 question from this type to be at the easy to moderate difficulty. The best questions to practice for the CAT Exam are the actual CAT Previous Year Paper. We at 2IIM offer you exactly that, in a student friendly format to take value from this.

Question 20 : The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

For nearly a century most psychologists have embraced one view of intelligence. Individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential (I.Q.); this potential is heavily in\xef\xac\x82uenced by heredity and difcult to alter; experts in measurement can determine a person’s intelligence early in life, currently from paper-and-pencil measures, perhaps eventually from examining the brain in action or even scrutinizing his/her genome. Recently, criticism of this conventional wisdom has mounted. Biologists ask if speaking of a single entity called “intelligence” is coherent and question the validity of measures used to estimate heritability of a trait in humans, who, unlike plants or animals, are not conceived and bred under controlled conditions.

  1. Biologists have questioned the long-standing view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the attempts to estimate it's heritability.
  2. Biologists have questioned the view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the ways in which what is inherited.
  3. Biologists have criticised that conventional wisdom that individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential.
  4. Biologists have started questioning psychologists' view of 'intelligence' as a measurable immutable characteristic of an individual.

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Explanatory Answer

The last line of the paragraph states the main idea: Biologists ask if speaking of a single entity called “intelligence” is coherent and question the validity of measures used to estimate heritability of a trait in humans. Option A rephrases this.

The second half of option B is incorrect. The paragraph says biologists question the validity of measures used to estimate heritability, not the ways in which intelligence is inherited. Options C is not as comprehensive as A. Option D is incorrect as it says intelligence is 'immutable' while the paragraph only says it is difficult to alter.


The answer is, "Biologists have questioned the long-standing view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the attempts to estimate it's heritability."

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