Question ID 48ead968

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PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Command of

PSAT 10 Ideas Evidence

ID: 48ead968
Simulated Change in Annual Aquifer Input and Irrigation Output if Precipitation Concentration Increases as Climate
Models Predict

% change in
Baseline concentration of % change in water % change in surface groundwater used for
annual precipitation entering aquifers water used for irrigation irrigation

Precipitation is currently
4.9 0.4 0.9
somewhat concentrated

Precipitation is currently
11.0 9.0 7.9
evenly distributed
Some climate models for the western United States predict that while total annual precipitation may remain unchanged
from the present level, precipitation will become concentrated into fewer but more intense rain and snow events.
University of Texas climate scientist Geeta Persad and her colleagues simulated how the amount of water entering
aquifers and the amount being used for irrigation purposes would change if this were to occur. Persad and her
colleagues concluded that concentration of precipitation into fewer events would result in a higher number of dry days,
triggering more irrigation, but that this change in irrigation output is highly sensitive to the baseline concentration of
precipitation that currently exists in an area.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support Persad and her colleagues’ conclusion?

A. If baseline precipitation is somewhat concentrated, the amount of water being used for irrigation will increase 0.4%
for surface water and 0.9% for groundwater, whereas the amount of water entering aquifers will increase 11.0% if
baseline precipitation is evenly distributed.

B. If baseline precipitation is somewhat concentrated, water use for irrigation will increase only slightly, whereas it will
increase 9.0% for surface water and 7.9% for groundwater if baseline precipitation is evenly distributed.

C. If baseline precipitation is somewhat concentrated, the amount of water entering aquifers will increase 4.9%, while
the amount being used for irrigation will increase 0.4% for surface water and 0.9% for groundwater.

D. If baseline precipitation is somewhat concentrated, water use for irrigation will decline by a small amount, whereas
it will increase 11.0% for surface water and 9.0% for groundwater if baseline precipitation is evenly distributed.
Question ID 8c5213c5
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and
PSAT 10 Ideas Details

ID: 8c5213c5
To make her art more widely available, graphic artist Elizabeth Catlett turned to linocuts. In linocut printing, an artist
carves an image into a sheet of linoleum to create a stamp that is used to mass-produce prints. In the linocut series The
Black Woman (1946–1947), Catlett depicts the everyday experiences of Black women alongside the achievements of
well-known Black women. This pairing invites the viewer to draw connections among the women. The linocut process
enabled Catlett’s work to reach a wide audience and supported her aim to unite Black women through her art.

According to the text, what is significant about Catlett’s use of linocut printing?

A. Linocut printing involved using materials that were readily available to Catlett.

B. Linocut printing helped Catlett use art to connect people, especially Black women.

C. Catlett became commercially successful once she started using linocut printing.

D. Catlett was one of the first Black artists to use linocut printing.
Question ID 3a4ad06d
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Command of

PSAT 10 Ideas Evidence

ID: 3a4ad06d
Plants like potatoes, tomatoes, and soybeans are susceptible to bacterial wilt disease caused by the bacteria Ralstonia
solanacearum. A multinational team of scientists led by Zhong Wei studied whether other microbes in the soil might
influence the degree to which plants are affected by the disease. The team sampled soil surrounding individual tomato
plants over time and compared the results of plants that became diseased with those that remained healthy. They
concluded that the presence of certain microbes in the soil might explain the difference between healthy and diseased
plants.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the team’s conclusion?

A. The soil surrounding healthy plants contained significantly higher concentrations of microbes known to inhibit
Ralstonia solanacearum than the soil surrounding diseased plants did.

B. The soil surrounding the plants contained high concentrations of Ralstonia solanacearum regardless of whether the
plants were affected by wilt disease.

C. The soil surrounding healthy plants tended to have significantly higher moisture levels than the soil surrounding
diseased plants did.

D. By the end of the experiment, over half the plants had been affected by wilt disease regardless of differences in the
types and concentrations of microbes in the surrounding soil.
Question ID 6b27e418
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and
PSAT 10 Ideas Details

ID: 6b27e418
Many literary theorists distinguish between fabula, a narrative’s content, and syuzhet, a narrative’s arrangement and
presentation of events. In the film The Godfather Part II, the fabula is the story of the Corleone family, and the syuzhet is
the presentation of the story as it alternates between two timelines in 1901 and 1958. But literary theorist Mikhail
Bakhtin maintained that fabula and syuzhet are insufficient to completely describe a narrative—he held that systematic
categorizations of artistic phenomena discount the subtle way in which meaning is created by interactions between the
artist, the work, and the audience.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A. Literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin argued that there are important characteristics of narratives that are not fully
encompassed by two concepts that other theorists have used to analyze narratives.

B. Literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin claimed that meaning is not inherent in a narrative but is created when an audience
encounters a narrative so that narratives are interpreted differently by different people.

C. The storytelling methods used in The Godfather Part II may seem unusually complicated, but they can be easily
understood when two concepts from literary theory are utilized.

D. Narratives that are told out of chronological order are more difficult for audiences to understand than are narratives
presented chronologically.
Question ID 50948f5b
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 50948f5b
Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about detective Sherlock Holmes were published between 1887 and 1927. They have
inspired countless successful adaptations, including comic strips, movies, and a television series Sherlock Hound,
directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is celebrated for his animated movies. Until 2014, these stories were copyrighted. The
right to adapt was only available to those who could afford the copyright fee and gain approval from the strict copyright
holders of Doyle’s estate. Some journalists predict that the number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations is likely to increase
since the end of copyright means that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. Doyle’s original stories will become hard to find.

B. people will become more interested in detective stories than they were in the 1800s.

C. producing adaptations will become easier and less expensive.

D. the former copyright holders of Doyle’s estate will return fees they collected.
Question ID 7b820c8c
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Inferences

PSAT 10 Ideas

ID: 7b820c8c
Overgrazing by purple sea urchins has caused many kelp forests along North America’s west coast to be replaced by
urchin barrens—areas stripped of vegetation and covered in purple sea urchins. Urchins in barrens persist in a state of
starvation that lessens their nutritional value—and thus their appeal—to many predators. Sarah Gravem and colleagues
placed sunflower sea stars, a once-abundant predator species suffering massive population declines in recent years, in
aquariums that each contained a nutritionally poor and a nutritionally rich purple sea urchin. The researchers found that
the sea stars selected the nutritionally rich urchin in 42.7% of trials and the nutritionally poor urchin in 37.5% of trials,
suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. sunflower sea stars are willing to hunt sea urchins, but if given a choice, they will prey on other more nutritious
marine animals instead.

B. sunflower sea stars are reluctant to feed on both nutritionally poor and nutritionally rich sea urchins and are
therefore unlikely to thrive in kelp forests.

C. sunflower sea stars are less likely to consume sea urchins in barrens than other species of sea stars are, putting
sunflower sea stars at a high risk of extinction.

D. sunflower sea stars do not always avoid foraging on nutritionally poor sea urchins, making sunflower sea star
population recovery a potentially important tool for controlling urchin barrens.
Question ID 94aba545
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Command of

PSAT 10 Ideas Evidence

ID: 94aba545
In the 1980s, many musicians and journalists in the English-speaking world began to draw attention to music from
around the globe—such as mbaqanga from South Africa and quan họ from Vietnam—that can’t be easily categorized
according to British or North American popular music genres, typically referring to such music as “world music.” While
some scholars have welcomed this development for bringing diverse musical forms to prominence in countries where
they’d previously been overlooked, musicologist Su Zheng claims that the concept of world music homogenizes highly
distinct traditions by reducing them all to a single category.

Which finding about mbaqanga and quan họ, if true, would most directly support Zheng’s claim?

A. Mbaqanga and quan họ developed independently of each other and have little in common musically.

B. Mbaqanga is significantly more popular in the English-speaking world than quan họ is.

C. Mbaqanga and quan họ are now performed by a diverse array of musicians with no direct connections to South
Africa or Vietnam.

D. Mbaqanga and quan họ are highly distinct from British and North American popular music genres but similar to
each other.
Question ID e75b4de6
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Command of

PSAT 10 Ideas Evidence

ID: e75b4de6
Sandra Cisneros’s 1984 novella The House on Mango Street made a lasting impact on US literature. Its depiction of
Mexican American culture inspired later authors to examine their own heritage within their fictional works. Also
influential was the book’s portrayal of the main character, Esperanza, during a pivotal year of her youth. This insightful
depiction of a preteen girl encouraged authors who, like Cisneros herself, are Latina to use fictional works to examine
experiences from their own youth.

Which statement, if true, would most strongly support the claim in the underlined sentence?

A. In interviews, a number of Latina authors say that The House on Mango Street inspired them to write about their own
adolescence in their novels.

B. In published writings, several prominent authors who are not Latina say that reading The House on Mango Street
influenced their approach to writing fiction.

C. The House on Mango Street has sold over six million copies and is one of the most commonly read books among
high school and university students in the US.

D. Since 1984, new novels about young Latina characters by Latina authors have often been compared to The House
on Mango Street.
Question ID 2ce657bc
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Command of

PSAT 10 Ideas Evidence

ID: 2ce657bc

Number of Infrared Beam Breaks by Mice

Treated with CNO or Saline, by Sex
1,500
Number of beam breaks

1,000

500

0
-4 10 24 38 52 66 80 94 108 122 136 150
Minutes from treatment

females with saline

males with saline
males with CNO
females with CNO

To investigate the influence of certain estrogen-responsive neurons on energy expenditure, biologist Stephanie Correa
et al. treated female and male mice with either saline solution or clozapine-N4-oxide (CNO), which activates the
neurons. Monitoring the activity levels of the mice by measuring how frequently the animals broke infrared beams
crossing their enclosures, Correa et al. found that the mice in their study showed sex-specific differences in response to
neuron activation: ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the assertion?

A. the four groups of mice differed greatly in their activity levels before treatment but showed identical activity levels at
the end of the monitoring period.

B. saline-treated females showed substantially more activity at certain points in the monitoring period than saline-
treated males did.

C. CNO-treated females showed more activity relative to saline-treated females than CNO-treated males showed
relative to saline-treated males.

D. CNO-treated females showed a substantial increase and then decline in activity over the monitoring period, whereas
CNO-treated males showed a substantial decline in activity followed by a steep increase.
Question ID 956cea40
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

PSAT/NMSQT & Reading and Writing Information and Central Ideas and
PSAT 10 Ideas Details

ID: 956cea40
Since its completion in 2014, Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest)—a pair of residential towers in Milan, Italy, covered by
vegetation—has become a striking symbol of environmental sustainability in architecture. Stefano Boeri intended his
design, which features balconies that are home to hundreds of trees, to serve as a model for promoting urban
biodiversity. However, the concept has faced skepticism: critics note that although the trees used in Bosco Verticale
were specifically cultivated for the project, it’s too early to tell if they can thrive in this unusual setting.

According to the text, why are some critics skeptical of the concept behind Bosco Verticale?

A. Some essential aspects of Bosco Verticale’s design are difficult to adapt to locations other than Milan.

B. The plant life on Bosco Verticale ended up being less varied than Boeri had envisioned it would be.

C. The construction of Bosco Verticale was no less environmentally damaging than the construction of more
conventional buildings is.

D. It is unclear whether Bosco Verticale can support the plant life included in its design.