CAT 2022 Slot 3 — VARC Question 22
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: When people socially learn from each other, they often learn without
understanding why what they’re copying—the beliefs and behaviours and technologies and know-how—works.
Paragraph: ___(1)___. The dual-inheritance theory ….says....that inheritance is itself an evolutionary system. It has variation. What makes us a new kind of animal, and so different and successful as a species, is we rely heavily on social learning, to the point where socially acquired information is effectively a second line of inheritance, the first being our genes…. ___(2)___. People tend to home in on who seems to be the smartest or most successful person around, as well as what everybody seems to be doing—the majority of people have something worth learning. ___(3)___. When you repeat this process over time, you can get, around the world, cultural packages—beliefs or behaviours or technology or other solutions —that are adapted to the local conditions. People have different psychologies, effectively. ___(4)___.
Answer & solution
- A
Option 1
Option 2
- C
Option 3
- D
Option 4
Easy
Sentence insertion. The missing sentence: "When people socially learn from each other, they often learn without understanding why what they're copying... works." So it must sit where the paragraph has just established that we rely on social learning and is about to describe how that copying happens (copying the smartest/most successful, the majority).
Blank 1 is the paragraph's opening, before social learning is even introduced. The sentence's "social learning" would have no antecedent. Too early.
Blank 2 (correct). Just before it, the text says socially acquired information is "a second line of inheritance." Just after it: "People tend to home in on who seems to be the smartest or most successful..." The missing sentence — that people copy without understanding why — bridges these perfectly: it states the nature of social learning, then the next line gives whom they copy.
Blank 3 falls between the "home in on the smartest" idea and "cultural packages adapted to local conditions" — the flow is already about outcomes of copying; reintroducing the basic definition here breaks it.
Blank 4 is the closing slot after "People have different psychologies." Inserting the definition of social learning at the very end is out of place.
Option 2 — the sentence links "second line of inheritance" to the description of how people copy the smartest/most successful.