Frogs react quickly and effectively to bugs that fly past them GMAT reading Comprehension

Reading Passage Question

Frogs react quickly and effectively to bugs that fly past them, but this by no means implies that they have a concept of 'bug.' Indeed, we can be pretty sure that they do not, or at best that their concept of 'bug' both under- and over-generalizes to a rather gross extent. For instance, they will over-generalize by snapping at bug-sized pellets that are flipped past them, but will under-generalize by totally ignoring motionless bugs even when no other food source is available. The most parsimonious explanation of their behavior is that networks of cells that respond to rapid movement and small rounded objects are directly linked to the snapping reflex, and that there is nothing more sophisticated than this inside the frog's brain.

In our case there is a very different story. Suppose that we are alone in a house late at night and hear a sound that we do not immediately identify. Unless we are in an abnormally anxious state we will not immediately respond to it. Rather we will listen intently, and try to identify the sound if it is repeated. In human terms, this means that we will try to provide a linguistic description for the sound. Only when we have done this (called it a creaking shutter, a cat trying to get out, a possible burglar, or whatever) will we take the appropriate action).

There can be little doubt that the case of the Vervet is intermediate between those of the frog and our own species. At some stage in the evolution of species, some kind of linkage began to form among those perceptions that had evolutionary consequences (life threatening or life-enhancing) for the creatures that received them, given that the perceptions caused the creature to behave in similar ways. For instance, a leopard's spots, a leopard's roar, and a leopard's smell might originally have caused reactions in quite different parts of the brain, but the fact that all provoked a similar result (flight) may have helped create a level of processing on which all three were neurally linked. Saying this is better than saying that linkages developed among perceptions of the same object or class of objects. The result was the formation of categories; rapid and accurate identification of category-membership became a crucial factor in the survival of = individuals.

“Frogs react quickly and effectively to bugs that fly past them”- is a GMAT reading comprehension exercise. Candidates need to be highly proficient in GMAT reading comprehension. There are four comprehension questions in this GMAT reading comprehension section. The purpose of the GMAT Reading Comprehension questions is to evaluate candidates' comprehension, analysis, and application skills. Candidates who are actively preparing can benefit from GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solutions and Explanation

1. Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for this passage

1. Visual Acuity and the Snapping Reflex
2. Visual Reactions Translated to Linguistic Description
3. Category Formation and the Survival of Species: Illustrated
4. Frog, Vervet, Human: The Reactive-Neural Connection
5. Neural Linkages and the Formation of Categories

2. Which inference about the formation of categories does this passage most closely support?

1. It is a similar process in frog, vervet, human, and presumably other complex organisms.
2. It takes place during an identifiable and uniform stage in the evolution of species
3. It originated in the formation of linkages that developed among perceptions of the same object or class of objects.
4. It originated in the need to process perceptions that delivered information needed for survival by the creatures that received them.
5. Save in humans, it cannot translate into language.

3. The purpose of this passage is:

1. to compare the reactions of the frog and the cockroach to life-threatening or life-enhancing stimuli
2. to identify reactions to the spots, roar, and smell of a leopard in exact locations in a creature's brain
3. to argue that creatures use their neural resources conservatively to respond to a wide variety of life-enhancing or life-threatening stimuli
4. to state a correspondence between the snapping reflex in frogs and the human response to sounds of ambiguous origin
5. to trace increasingly sophisticated reactions to stimuli among organisms ranging from the least to the most complex life forms

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