So here’s the gist: there will always be on paired passage set on the SAT (two passages adding up to the typical single passage length of 500 to 750 words.) What exactly is a paired passage? Well, just as its name implies, it is a set of two passages written on a similar topic. The passages usually do not completely agree with one another, but this doesn’t mean they are always on opposing sides either. More often, the relationship between them will be more subtle. Maybe the second one picks up on a detail in the rst and describes it further. Or maybe it provides a personal perspective on a global issue. In any case, these excerpts have been carefully chosen as passages to compare, so you can assume there are going to be several connections between them. Thank you, Captain Obvious, you say? You’re welcome.
On the paired passage, you can expect roughly 4 or 5 questions to be on both passages. The other questions will only pertain to one or the other.
The SAT’s Favorite Paired Passage Questions
Here’s one of the SAT’s absolute favorite questions to ask about both passages:
● Which choice best describes the relationship between the two passages?
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. You can expect that almost every single paired passage is going to ask you this question or a variation of it. Sometimes the answer choices will have to do with the di erent perspectives of the passages (how does each author feel about the topic?). Sometimes they will have to do with the content or structure of the passage (e.g. “Passage 1 takes a high-level view while Passage 2 describes one example in depth”). You should be on high alert to the relationship between the passages as you read, as you are almost guaranteed to see this question.
Other popular SAT Reading paired passage questions include:
● How would the author of Passage 1 respond to the author of Passage 2? (or vice versa)
● On which of the following points would the authors of both passages most likely agree (or disagree)?
Comparison questions might be about a detail in the passages; these tend to be the easiest, although you might have to hunt the answer down. (e.g. “Both the author of Passage 1 and Passage 2 describe pigeons as being…”), but oftentimes they are about higher level issues, so you want to be tracking the main idea of each passage and any similarities and di erences between them as you read. If you do this in advance, you will be much more prepared to answer the synthesis questions that follow.
Read One Passage at a Time if you Struggle with Reading
Typically, questions on paired passages will appear in this order: 1. questions only on the rst passage 2.
questions only on the second passage 3. questions on both passages. If you are not strong on the Reading section, you can chunk your reading by tackling Passage 1 rst and answering those questions and then reading Passage 2 and answering those questions before answering questions on both. This will help you retain more information and not get distracted by answer choices that appeared in the other passage.
Reading one passage at a time is also a great strategy if you are running out of time, but in this case, start with whichever passage has more questions on it.
Below you’ll nd an example of a paired passage to practice with. As you read, try to anticipate the comparison questions that might follow (guess what, there will one!).
Passage 1
It’s a pattern as old as time. Somebody makes an important scienti c breakthrough, which explains a piece of the world. But then people get caught up in the excitement of this breakthrough and try to use it to explain everything. This is what’s happening right now with neuroscience. The eld is obviously incredibly important and exciting. From personal experience, I can tell you that you get captivated by it and sometimes go o to
extremes, as if understanding the brain is the solution to understanding all thought and behavior.
This is happening at two levels. At the lowbrow level, there are the conference circuit neuro-mappers. These are people who take pretty brain-scan images and claim they can use them to predict what product somebody will buy, what party they will vote for, whether they are lying or not or whether a criminal should be held responsible for his crime.
At the highbrow end, there are scholars and theorists that some have called the “nothing buttists.” Human beings are nothing but neurons, they assert. Once we understand the brain well enough, we will be able to understand behavior. We will see the chain of physical causations that determine actions. We will see that many behaviors like addiction are nothing more than brain diseases. We will see that people don’t really possess free will; their actions are caused by material processes emerging directly out of nature. Neuroscience will replace psychology and other elds as the way to understand action.
These two forms of extremism are refuted by the same reality. The brain is not the mind. It is probably
impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.
Passage 2
Critics of fMRI cite its inability to pinpoint exact areas of the brain responsible for complex emotional states. The thinking goes that if scientists can’t identify a complex state in the brain that state exists elsewhere, in some nebulous mind. But that claim is simply false. Just because a given activity or response is spread across the brain—involving many di erent regions rather just a single section—does not mean it is beyond understanding, or that it doesn’t exist in the brain at all. It just means we need to work harder to discern its underlying
principles—even if doing so entails understanding how many di erent regions of the brain work in tandem.
In the current backlash against brain science, it is also important to realize that neuroimaging is just one of many tools used in neuroscience. Equally important is the fact that it is widely viewed as rudimentary in its current state—the equivalent of a one-megapixel camera when we are striving to build a gigapixel camera. It seems all but certain that we will continue to understand the brain better as technology allows us to zoom in tighter, with greater precision.
But the idea that the mind is separate from the brain no longer makes sense. They are simply di erent ways of describing the same thing. To talk about the brain is to talk about physiology, neurons, receptors, and
neurotransmitters; to talk about the mind is to talk about thoughts, ideas, beliefs, emotions, and desires. As an old and elegant phrase puts it, “The mind is what the brain does.”
The worst possibility of a full-scale, reckless backlash against neuroscience, to the exclusion of the eld’s best work, is that it might sacri ce important insights that could reshape psychiatry and medicine. If critics are too pessimistic about what the future holds, they are right about one thing: over the past decade, neuroscience has become over-privileged as a method of examining the mind. Journalists, courts, and sometimes even scientists
neuroscience progresses, it is possible for objective, physiological assessment of the brain to win out as the ultimate arbiter of truth when it comes to the mind. But that’s a long way o , if it ever will be possible at all. For now, we still need elds like psychology and psychiatry, which take the mind as their starting point, rather than the brain, to complement neuroscience. The basic elements of psychology, like beliefs, desires, goals, and thoughts, will likely always play a key role in our understanding of human behavior, which is why science needs researchers who study the mind every bit as much as it needs researchers who study the brain. Our aim should not be to pick the brain over the mind, or vice versa, but to build stronger bridges between our understandings of the two.
Practice Question
How would the author of passage 1 regard the idea stated in passage 2 that (“Perhaps as neuroscience... the mind”)?
A. With little reservation B. With reluctant approval C. With marked skepticism D. With outright enthusiasm
Tips
To answer this question, you will not only have to read both passages, but will also need to have a good idea of what each author is talking about. Here’s your plan of attack:
1. Get the big picture of both passages (as you read).
2. Understand how the passages disagree and, when it applies, how they agree (again, as you read you should be on the lookout for this).
3. Answer questions by going back to the passage, nding relevant information, and then phrasing a response based on the text.
Explanation
The author of Passage 1 speaks out very strongly against the notion that neuroscience will be able to tell us everything about the mind. The two are di erent, he believes: “The brain is not the mind” he says. In other words, he believes a brain scan will be able to tell you all about the brain, but not much about the mind or such
subtle states as emotion, mood, etc. This matches up best with C), which means strong doubt. A) is incorrect because the author of Passage 1 does have reservations that neuroscience will be able to eventually tell us everything about the mind. If you picked this one, you might have made the mistake of reading the opinion of the “nothing buttists” as the author’s opinion. The “nothing buttists” believe that “neuroscience will replace psychology,” but the author doesn’t. B) and D) are incorrect for the same reason: the author does not “approve”
of the idea that the brain will become the ultimate arbiter of truth when it comes to the mind, and he is certainly not enthusiastic about it!
If you struggled with this one, practice, practice, practice with comparing texts and nding all the similarities and di erences between them. It will get easier!