A study by a team including finance professor Madhu Veeraraghavan suggests that exposure to sunshine during the workday can lead to overly optimistic behavior. Using data spanning from 1994 to 2010 for a set of US companies, the team compared over 29,000 annual earnings forecasts to the actual earnings later reported by those companies. The team found that the greater the exposure to sunshine at work in the two weeks before a manager submitted an earnings forecast, the more the manager’s forecast exceeded what the company actually earned that year.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined sentence in the overall structure of the text?

A)To summarize the results of the team’s analysis.

B) To explain part of the methodology used in the team’s study.

C) To present a specific example that illustrates the study’s findings.

D) To call out a challenge the team faced in conducting its analysis.

Industrial activity is often assumed to be a threat to wildlife, but that isn’t always so. Consider the silver-studded blue butterfly (Plebejus argus): as forest growth has reduced grasslands in northern Germany, many of these butterflies have left meadow habitats and are now thriving in active limestone quarries. In a survey of multiple active quarries and patches of maintained grassland, an ecologist found silver-studded blue butterflies in 100% of the quarries but only 57% of the grassland patches. Moreover, butterfly populations in the quarries were four times larger than those in the meadows.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

A)It challenges a common assumption about the species under investigation in the research referred to in the text.

B) It suggests that a certain species should be included in additional studies like the one mentioned later in the text.

C) It provides a definition for an unfamiliar term that is central to the main argument in the text.

D) It introduces discussion of a specific example that supports the general claim made in the previous sentence.

Many archaeologists assume that large-scale engineering projects in ancient societies required an elite class to plan and direct the necessary labor. However, recent discoveries, such as the excavation of an ancient canal near the Gulf Coast of Alabama, have complicated this picture. Using radiocarbon dating, a team of researchers concluded that the 1.39-kilometerlong canal was most likely constructed between 576 and 650 CE by an Indigenous society that was relatively free of social classes.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A) It describes a common view among archaeologists, then discusses a recent finding that challenges that view.

B) It outlines a method used in some archaeological fieldwork, then explains why an alternative method is superior to it.

C) It presents contradictory conclusions drawn by archaeologists, then evaluates a study that has apparently resolved that contradiction.

D) It identifies a gap in scientific research, then presents a strategy used by some archaeologists to remedy that gap.

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Mercedes López-Morales and colleagues measured the wavelengths of light traveling through the atmosphere of WASP-39b, an exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system. Different molecules absorb different wavelengths of light, and the wavelength measurements showed the presence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in WASP-39b’s atmosphere. This finding not only offers the first decisive evidence of CO₂ in the atmosphere of an exoplanet but also illustrates the potential for future scientific breakthroughs held by the JWST.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A)It discusses a method used by some researchers, then states why an alternative method is superior to it.

B) It outlines the steps taken in a scientific study, then presents a hypothesis based on that study.

C) It describes how researchers made a scientific discovery, then explains the importance of that discovery.

D) It examines how a group of scientists reached a conclusion, then shows how other scientists have challenged that conclusion.

Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia. Jinshanzhuang-Hong Kong–based import/export firms-likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

A) It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive.

B) It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.

C) It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence.

D) It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on.

The following text is adapted from Charles Dickens’s 1854 novel Hard Times. Coketown is a fictional town in England. [Coketown] contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A)To reveal how the predictability of the town makes it easy for people lose track of time.

B) To explain the limited work opportunities available to the town’s residents.

C) To emphasize the uniformity of both the town and the people who live there.

D) To argue that the simplicity of life in the town makes it a pleasant place to live.

The following text is adapted from Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1902 novel The Sport of the Gods. Joe and some of his family members have recently moved to New York City.

[Joe] was wild with enthusiasm and with a desire to be a part of all that the metropolis meant. In the evening he saw the young fellows passing by dressed in their spruce clothes, and he wondered with a sort of envy where they could be going. Back home there had been no place much worth going to, except church and one or two people’s houses.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A)It explains why a character has traveled to a city.

B) It compares a character’s thoughts about an event at two different times of day.

C) It presents a character feeling regret over leaving home.

D) It illustrates a character’s reaction to a new environment.

Yawn contagion occurs when one individual yawns in response to another’s yawn. Studies of this behavior in primates have focused on populations in captivity, but biologist Elisabetta Palagi and her colleagues have shown that it can occur in wild primate populations as well. In their study, which focused on a wild population of gelada monkeys (Theropithecus gelada) in Ethiopia, the researchers further reported that yawn contagion most commonly occurred in males and across different social groups instead of within a single social group.

Which choice best describes the function of the first sentence in the text as a whole?

A)It introduces a problem that is examined in the text.

B) It makes a claim that is challenged in the text.

C) It defines a phenomenon that is discussed in the text.

D) It presents a hypothesis that is evaluated in the text.

Part of the Atacama Desert in Peru has surprisingly rich plant life despite receiving almost no rainfall. Moisture from winter fog sustains plants once they’re growing, but the soil’s tough crust makes it hard for seeds to germinate in the first place. Local birds that dig nests in the ground seem to be of help: they churn the soil, exposing buried seeds to moisture and nutrients. Indeed, in 2016 Cristina Rengifo Faiffer found that mounds of soil dug up by birds were far more fertile and supported more seedlings than soil in undisturbed areas.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

A) It elaborates on the idea that the top layer of Atacama Desert soil forms a tough crust.

B) It describes the process by which seeds are deposited into Atacama Desert soil.

C) It explains how certain birds promote seed germination in Atacama Desert soil.

D) It identifies the reason particular bird species dig nests in Atacama Desert soil.

The following text is from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables. Anne, an eleven-year-old girl, has come to live on a farm with a woman named Marilla in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Anne reveled in the world of color about her.
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill—several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room with them.”
“Messy things,” said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably developed. “You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in.”

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A) To show that Anne and Marilla have very different personalities

B) To describe an argument that Anne and Marilla often have

C) To emphasize Marilla’s disapproval of how Anne has decorated her roo.

D) To demonstrate that Anne has a newly developed appreciation of nature