SAT Reading & Writing · Inferences
The absence of any mention of physical decline most strongly suggests that ______
An art historian studying a series of self-portraits painted by the same artist over four decades notices that the artist's brushwork becomes visibly looser and less precise in the final decade, even though the artist's letters from that period show no complaints about failing eyesight or hand tremors.
Which choice most logically completes the text?
The absence of any mention of physical decline most strongly suggests that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
The absence of any mention of physical decline most strongly suggests that ______
Answer and explanation
Answer: D: the change in brushwork was necessarily a deliberate artistic choice instead of a physical limitation.
The passage's key detail is a conspicuous absence, no complaints about physical decline, which raises the alternative explanation of deliberate stylistic choice, since a physical cause would be the more obvious first explanation to rule out. D is the only choice drawing that specific, evidence-grounded inference. B contradicts the passage, which discusses the artist's continued production of self-portraits. C overstates the finding into an unexplainable mystery, when the passage points toward a specific plausible explanation. A goes beyond what the letters alone can establish, since silence about a topic isn't the same as positive proof of its absence.
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