CAT 2017 Slot 1 — VARC Question 32
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out.
- People who study children’s language spend a lot of time watching how babies reacts to the speech they hear around them.
- They make films of adults and babies interacting, and examine them very carefully to see whether the babies show any signs of understanding what the adults say.
- They believe that babies begin to react to language from the very moment they are born.
- Sometimes the signs are very subtle – slight movements of the baby’s eyes or the head or the hands.
- You’d never notice them if you were just sitting with the child, but by watching a recording over and over, you can spot them.
Answer & solution
Correct answer: 3
Answer: 3
Easy
Odd-sentence-out: first fix the theme that four sentences share, then spot the one that breaks it. Here four sentences describe the method researchers use — filming babies and reviewing the footage to catch tiny reactions. The misfit will be about something else (e.g. a belief), not the method.
Establish the core thread. Sentence 1 sets the scene (researchers watch how babies react). Sentence 2 gives the technique — "They make films of adults and babies interacting, and examine them very carefully." Sentence 4 notes the signs are "very subtle – slight movements of the eyes or head or hands," and sentence 5 explains why filming matters: "by watching a recording over and over, you can spot them." These four form a tight 1–2–4–5 unit about the filming method.
Isolate the misfit: 3. Sentence 3 — "They believe that babies begin to react to language from the very moment they are born" — reports a belief about when reaction begins. It says nothing about filming or examining footage, and it interrupts the method-focused chain. It is the odd one out.
The odd sentence is 3 (a belief, not part of the filming method). Key in 3.
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