89.
Which of the following most logically completes the argument?
The growing popularity of computer-based activities was widely predicted to result in a corresponding decline in television viewing. Recent studies have found that, in the United States, people who own computers watch, on average, significantly less television than people who do not own computers. In itself, however, this finding does very little to show that computer use tends to reduce television viewing time, since __________.
A. many people who watch little or no television do not own a computer
B. even though most computer owners in the United States watch significantly less television than the national average, some computer owners watch far more television than the national average
C. computer owners in the United States predominantly belong to demographic groups that have long been known to spend less time watching television than the population as a whole does
D. many computer owners in the United States have enough leisure time that spending significant amounts of time on the computer still leaves ample time for watching television
E. many people use their computers primarily for tasks such as correspondence that can be done more rapidly on the computer, and doing so leaves more leisure time for watching television
答案是C
The growing popularity of computer-based activities was widely expected to result in a decline in television viewing, since it had been assumed that people lack sufficient free time to maintain current television-viewing levels while spending increasing amounts of free time on the computer. That assumption, however, is evidently false: in a recent mail survey concerning media use, a very large majority of respondents who report increasing time spent per week using computers report no change in time spent watching television.
In order to evaluate the argument, it would be most useful to determine which of the following?
A. Whether the survey collected information about the amount of money respondents spent on free-time media use
B. Whether the amount of time spent watching television is declining among people who report that they rarely or never use computers
C. Whether the type of television programs a person watches tends to change as the amount of time spent per week using computers increases
D. Whether a large majority of the computer owners in the survey reported spending increasing amounts of time per week using computers
E. Whether the survey respondents’ reports of time spent using computers included time spent using computers at work
