CAT 2015 Question Paper VARC Slot 2 (Available):Download Solutions with Answer Key PDF

CAT Questions

• 1.

  The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
  For nearly a century most psychologists have embraced one view of intelligence. Individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential (I.Q.); this potential is heavily influenced by heredity and difficult to alter; experts in measurement can determine a person’s intelligence early in life, currently from paper-and-pencil measures, perhaps eventually from examining the brain in action or even scrutinizing his/her genome. Recently, criticism of this conventional wisdom has mounted. Biologists ask if speaking of a single entity called “intelligence” is coherent and question the validity of measures used to estimate heritability of a trait in humans, who, unlike plants or animals, are not conceived and bred under controlled conditions.

  • Biologists have questioned the long-standing view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the attempts to estimate its heritability.
  • Biologists have started questioning psychologists' view of 'intelligence' as a measurable immutable characteristic of an individual.
  • Biologists have questioned the view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the ways in which what is inherited.
  • Biologists have criticised that conventional wisdom that individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential.
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• 2.

  Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

  • To create a synapse, the neuron has specialized structures, often seen as tiny swellings, at its terminal end of the axon where it stores the chemicals that are emitted to transmit a signal to the next neuron.
  • This fetal warm-up act—the soldering of neural connections before the eyes actually function—is crucial to the performance of the visual system.
  • The reasons for this paring back of synapses is a mystery, but synaptic pruning is thought to sharpen and reinforce the “correct” synapses, while removing the weak and unnecessary ones.
  • Neural connections between the eyes and the brain are formed long before birth, establishing the wiring and the circuitry that allow a child to begin visualizing the world the minute she emerges from the womb.
  • During this rehearsal period, synapses—points of chemical connection—between nerve cells are generated in great excess, only to be pruned back during later development.
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• 3.

  This book review argues that, according to Rappaport, tea is unlike other “morality” products because it:

  • was actively encouraged by interest groups in the government.
  • was marketed by a wide range of interest groups.
  • appealed to a universal group and not just to a niche section of people.
  • had an actual beneficial effect on social interaction and society in general.
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• 4.

  Five jumbled sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

  • About half of all the oxygen we breathe is made near the surface of the ocean by phytoplankton that photosynthesize just like land-dwelling plants.
  • A team of scientists that includes Boston University experts has discovered they also produce oxygen on the seafloor.
  • The research team used deep-sea chambers that land on the seafloor and enclose the seawater, sediment, polymetallic nodules, and living organisms.
  • The discovery is a surprise considering oxygen is typically created by plants and organisms with help from the sun—not by rocks on the ocean floor.
  • The deep-sea rocks, called polymetallic nodules, don’t only host a surprising number of sea critters.
    
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• 5.

  Directions: There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (Option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. 
  
  Sentence: This philosophical cut at one's core beliefs, values, and way of life is difficult enough.  
  
  Paragraph:
  The experience of reading philosophy is often disquieting. When reading philosophy, the values around which one has heretofore organised one's life may come to look provincial, flatly wrong, or even evil. __(1)__ When beliefs previously held as truths are rendered implausible, new beliefs, values, and ways of living may be required. __(2)__ What's worse, philosophers admonish each other to remain unsutured until such time as a defensible new answer is revealed or constructed. Sometimes philosophical writing is even strictly critical in that it does not even attempt to provide an alternative after tearing down a cultural or conceptual citadel. __(3)__ The reader of philosophy must be prepared for the possibility of this experience. While reading philosophy can help one clarify one's values, and even make one self-conscious for the first time of the fact that there are good reasons for believing what one believes, it can also generate Un remediated doubt that is difficult to live with.

  • Option 1
  • Option 3
  • Option 4
  • Option 2
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• 6.

  Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

  • Animals have an interest in fulfilling their basic needs, but also in avoiding suffering, and thus we ought to extend moral consideration.
  • Singer viewed himself as a utilitarian, and presents a direct moral theory concerning animal rights, in contrast to indirect positions, such as welfarist views.
  • He argued for extending moral consideration to animals because, similar to humans, animals have certain significant interests.
  • The event that publicly announced animal rights as a legitimate issue within contemporary philosophy was Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation text in 1975.
  • As such, we ought to view their interests alongside and equal to human interests, which results in humans having direct moral duties towards animals.
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