This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!
3.20: Olfactory Adaptation, pt. 1
As usual, we begin by asking whether this question requires us to find a single right answer or to choose the best answer from an array of potentially viable options. The lack of comparative language here (no “most,” “best,” or “primarily”) tells us that we’re looking at the first type of question.
In order to evaluate these answer choices efficiently, we need to find the place in the passage that tells us about “reexposure […] after an extended absence.” Both of these key terms are used in lines 7-10, where we’re informed that the odor continues to be perceived as less intense even after a long absence. This rules out answer (A), which is the opposite of what the passage says, and it confirms (B) as our winner. We’d stop right here on a real exam, but for now we can note that (C) and (D) also contradict the information in lines 7-10. Answer (E) is (no pun intended) a red herring: other forms of sensory adaptation are briefly mentioned at the beginning of the passage, but that’s the last we hear about them.
Vocab Notes
Even if you weren’t familiar with the word olfactory beforehand, you probably worked out from context that it means “having to do with the sense of smell.” By itself this isn’t too remarkable — we use context clues in reading all the time — but it illustrates a useful principle for GRE Verbal problem solving. Reading Comp passages are drawn from a wide variety of subjects and disciplines, and they will often contain words that are specific to those disciplines. Since very few people have taken coursework — let alone majored or minored — in all the subjects they see on the GRE, you will sooner or later have to fall back on this kind of contextual reasoning. The thing to remember is that if these technical terms are required to solve a question, they will be defined, implicitly or explicitly, within the passage.