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!

3.21: Olfactory Adaptation, pt. 2

This is another instance of the “one right answer” question type, and it’s almost as straightforward as question 3.20. This time, they give us the line number to look for, which usually (not always!) indicates that the information we need is nearby. A quick read through the sentence (lines 11-17) provides us with three basic facts about the “research on olfactory adaptation”:

• the adaptation is usually short-lived (which is what transient means)
• the exposures are short, too
• even with these limitations, researchers can learn a lot about olfactory exposure

We then compare these facts to the answer choices. (A), the correct answer, is substantially the same as the third bullet point above. We might call it a “double bluff”: it looks like the right answer, so people assume it’s a trick, but actually … it’s the right answer. (If you’re familiar with the 1987 cult classic The Princess Bride, this is like that scene with the goblets and the iocaine powder.) Specifically, the wording of (A) closely follows that of the passage, a trait that many test-takers have learned to treat as a warning sign. “Answers that closely resemble the original text,” they reason, “are probably wrong.” This is true, but only because any answer in a standard multiple question is probably wrong: out of a set of five options, only one will be correct. Consequently, it’s best not to invest too much effort in determining whether an answer sounds “too good to be true.” Instead, read it carefully and compare its meaning with what you know from the passage.

The four incorrect answers all fail in ways that should be familiar by now. (B) says “rarely” where the passage says “commonly” (line 7); (C) says that the changes that occur in natural environments are “transient,” but lines 17-21 say that we don’t know that yet. (D) is contradicted by the statement that “brief” exposures also produce receptor fatigue (lines 21-24), and (E) asserts as fact something that the passage describes as an open question (lines 19-21).