单选题 12.In an experiment, volunteers walked individually through a dark, abandoned theater. Half of the volunteers had been told that the theater was haunted and the other half that it was under renovation. The first half reported significantly more unusual experiences than the second did. The researchers concluded that reports of encounters with ghosts and other supernaural entities generally result from prior expectations of such experiences.
Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the researchers' reasoning?

A、 None of the volunteers in the second half believed that the unusual experiences they reported were supernatural.
B、 All of the volunteers in the first half believed that the researchers' statement that the theater was haunted was a lie.
C、 Before being told about the theater, the volunteers within each group varied considerably in their prior beliefs aboujt supernatural experiences.
D、 Each unusual experience reported by the volunteers had a cause that did not involve the supernatural.
E、 The researchers did not believe that the theater was haunted.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】Argument Evaluation
Situation Volunteers in an experiment walked through a dark, abandoned theater. Those who had been told the theater was haunted reported more unusual experiences than those who had been told it was under renovation.
Reasoning What evidence would most strongly suggest that the experimental results do not indicate that reports of supernatural encounters result from prior expectations of such experiences? The researcher assumes that the half of the volunteers who had been told the theater was haunted were more inclined to expect supernatural experiences in the theater than were the other half of the volunteers. Based on this assumption and the greater incidence of reports of unusual experiences among the first half of the volunteers, the researcher concludes that prior expectation of supernatural experiences makes people more likely to report such experiences. The researchers' reasoning would be weakened by evidence that the volunteers did not actually have the expectations the researchers assumed them to have, or by evidence that any such expectations did not influence their reports.
A This strengthens the argument by indicating that the volunteers whom the researchers did not lead to expect supernatural experiences reported no such experiences.
B Correct. If none of the volunteers believed the researchers' claim that the theater was haunted, then the implicit assumption that several of those volunteers expected supernatural experiences in the theater is flawed, and so the inference that their prior expectations probably account for their reports of supernatural experiences is flawed.
C This is compatible with the researchers' inference and does not undermine it. Even if the volunteers' initial beliefs about supernatural experiences varied, the researchers' claims about the theater might have strongly influenced how many volunteers in each group expected to have such experiences in the theater specifically.
D The researchers argue that the volunteers' prior expectations account for all the reports of unusual experiences, and this is compatible with there being no genuine supernatural occurrences in the theater.
E Whatever the researchers personally believed about the theater, they might still have successfully influenced the volunteers' beliefs about it.
The correct answer is B.