Free Reading Comprehension Set I - 02 Practice Test - CAT 

D is the best answer. The question requires you to recognize which of the choices is NOT mentioned in the passage as a way in which senior managers use intuition. The passage does not mention stipulating goals.

D is the best answer. The author asserts that the writers in question “display a poor grasp of what intuition is” (lines 21-22). The next paragraph presents a view that, according to the author of the passage, characterizes intuition more accurately than the writers on management do. Isenberg’s research is specifically described as showing the ways in which managers use intuition (lines 28-30). Therefore, what Isenberg correctly comprehends, and the writers in question misunderstand, is how managers use intuition, as this choice states.

C is the best answer. The question requires you to recognize which of the choices is NOT mentioned in the passage as a component of the classical model of decision analysis. Only this choice, “action undertaken in order to discover more information about a problem,” does not appear in the passage

B is the best answer. The question requires you to compare behavior based on intuition with behavior based on formal decision analysis. This choice specifies that the manager who uses intuition incorporates action into the decision-making process, but the manager who uses formal analysis does not. This distinction is made in several places in the passage. Lines 6-7 emphasize that decision-making and action-taking are separate steps in formal decision analysis: “making a decision, and only then taking action”. On the other hand, those who use intuition “integrate action into the process of thinking” (lines 15-16). Again, the author mentions that in the intuitive style of management,“ ‘thinking’ is inseparable from acting” (lines 60-61), and “action is often part of defining the problem” (lines 80-81).

D is the best answer. The question requires you to identify a statement that can be inferred from information in the passage but is not explicitly stated. The author asserts that intuitive managers can “move rapidly to engender a plausible solution” (lines 53-54) and that their intuition is based on “experience that builds skill” (line 37). This implies that the combination of skill and rapidity enables mangers to employ their practical experience more efficiently, as this choice states.

D is the best answer. The second and third paragraphs of the passage indicate that morphogenetic determinants are substances in the embryo that are activated after the egg has been fertilized and that “tell a cell what to become” (lines 21-23). If, as the author asserts in the first paragraph, biologists have succeeded in dividing an embryo into two parts, each of which survives and develops into a normal embryo, it can be concluded that the quantity of morphogenetic determinants in the early embryo is greater than that required for the development of a single individual.

C is the best answer. In identifying the main topic of the passage, you must consider the passage as a whole. In the first paragraph, the author provides a historical context for the debate described in the second paragraph, concerning when and how the determination of embryo cells takes place. The third and fourth paragraphs provide a specific example of the “Recent discoveries in molecular biology” (lines 28-29) that may lead to the resolution of that debate.

D is the best answer. According to the author, early investigators arrived at the conclusion that the cells of the embryo are undetermined because they “found that if they separated an invertebrate animal embryo into two parts at an early stage of its life, it would survive and develop as two normal embryos” (lines 1-6). However, later biologists discovered that when an embryo was cut in places different from the one used by the early investigators, it did not form two whole embryos. Because the earlier biologists apparently arrived at their conclusion without attempting to cut an embryo in different planes, it would appear that they assumed, erroneously, that different ways of separating the embryos would not affect the fate of the two embryo parts.

A is the best answer. In the third paragraph, the author asserts that substances that function as morphogenetic determinants are located in the cytoplasm of the cell and become active after the cell is fertilized. In the fourth paragraph we learn that these substances are “maternal messenger RNA’s” and that they “direct, in large part, the synthesis of histones,” which, after being synthesized, “move into the cell nucleus” (lines 59-68). Thus, it can be inferred that after the egg is fertilized, the initial production of histones occurs in the cytoplasm.

A is the best answer. Lines 45-51 indicate that substances that function as morphogenetic determinants are inactive in the unfertilized egg and that when the egg is fertilized, they “become active and, presumably, govern the behavior of the genes they interact with.” In the fourth paragraph, we learn that these substances exert their control over the fate of the cell by directing “the synthesis of histones.” Because these histones cannot be synthesized until the substances that function as morphogenetic determinants become active, and because these substances do not become active until the egg is fertilized, it can be inferred that the synthesis of the histones is dependent on the fertilization of the egg.

C is the best answer. Lines 38-41 in from us that in his study of sea urchins, Gross “found that an unfertilized egg contains substances that function as morphogetic determinants.” Lines 58-60 assert that the “substances that Gross studied are maternal messenger RNA’s,” and in lines 62-63 we learn that these maternal messenger RNA’s can be found in “ a wide variety of organisms.”

C is the best answer. In lines 35-41, the author states that ten percent of the Black workers in the South were employed in “manufacturing and mechanical pursuits” and then identifies “manufacturing and mechanical pursuits” as the general federal census category for industrial occupations in 1910. Thus, she indicates that she used the federal census as a source of information in her investigation.

B is the best answer. To answer this question, you must first identify the author’s argument. The author argues that it is possible that Black migrants to the North were living and working in urban areas of the South rather in rural areas, as researchers had previously assumed. In lines 44-48, the author states that it may be “surprising” that an employed population would relocate. Thus, the author anticipates an objection to her argument on the grounds that Black urban workers in the South would have been unlikely to leave an economically secure existence. She meets that objection by stating that “an explanation lies in the labor conditions then prevalent in the South” (lines 46-48), and discusses the low wages that may have motivated Black workers to migrate north for higher pay.

A is the best answer. The author discusses wages in southern cities in the third paragraph. Lines 68-73 state that an increase in the number of rural workers who migrated to southern cities after the collapse of the cotton industry led to increased competition for jobs and resulted in wages being pushed lower.

C is the best answer. This question asks you to identify the possible influences that motivated Black workers in their decision to migrate north, and then to recognize which of the choices is NOT mentioned as an influence on Black workers. This is the only option not mentioned in the passage as an influence that may have motivated southern Black workers to move north in the Great Migration.

D is the best answer. The first paragraph describes a common assumption about the Great Migration, that the majority of migrants came from rural areas. It also restates the conclusion that is based on this assumption, that the subsequent economic difficulties of Black migrants in the North were a result of their unfamiliarity with urban life. In the second paragraph, the author states that the “question of who actually left the South” (lines 27-28) has never been adequately researched. She goes on to argue that Black migrants may actually have been from urban areas rather than rural areas, and thus that their subsequent economic problems in northern cities were not caused by their rural background. In making this argument, the author is challenging the “widely accepted explanation” presented in the first paragraph.