CAT 2023- Slot 2 Reading Comprehensions with Solution

Reading Comprehension 1

When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single “best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way
of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process.

Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are
at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public
welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical
code of engineering.

In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences. . . . Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to
unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials. Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity.

Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are
working on this. . . . Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that
challenge our ways of thinking.

Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical self reflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.

Q.1 All of the following are examples of the negative outcomes of focusing on technical ideals in the medical sphere EXCEPT the:

A. continuing calibration of medical devices based on past racial biases that have remained unadjusted for changes.

B. exclusion of non-privileged groups in clinical trials which leads to incorrect drug dosages.

C. incorrect assignment of people as female at birth which has resulted in faulty drug interventions.

D. neglect of research and development of medical technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases that typically afflict marginalised communities.

Solution- C

Q.2 In this passage, the author is making the claim that:

1. technical-social dualism has emerged as a technique for engineering students to
   incorporate social considerations into their technical problem-solving processes.
2. the objective of best solutions in engineering has shifted the focus of pedagogy from
   humanism and social obligations to technological perfection.
3. engineering students today are trained to be non-subjective in their reasoning as this
   best enables them to develop much-needed universal solutions.
4. engineering students today are taught to focus on objective technical outcomes,
   independent of the social dimensions of their work.

Option- 4

Q.3 The author gives all of the following reasons for why marginalised people are systematically discriminated against in technology-related interventions EXCEPT:

1. “But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by
   a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society.”
2. “Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decisionmaking roles can encode social inequities.”
3. “These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists
   who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered
   nonwhite people as inferior.”
4. “And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a
   crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas
   emissions

Option- 4

Q.4 We can infer that the author would approve of a more evolved engineering pedagogy that includes all of the following EXCCEPT:

1. a more responsible approach to technical design and problem-solving than a focus on
   speed in developing and bringing to scale.

2. making considerations of environmental sustainability intrinsic to the development of technological solutions.
3. design that is based on the needs of communities using local knowledge and responding to local priorities.
4. moving towards technical-social dualism where social community needs are incorporated in problem-definition and solutions.

Solution- 4

Reading Comprehension 2

Humans today make music. Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald statement: that only certain humans make music, that extensive training is involved, that
many societies distinguish musical specialists from nonmusicians, that in today’s societies most listen to music rather than making it, and so forth. These qualifications, whatever their
local merit, are moot in the face of the overarching truth that making music, considered from a cognitive and psychological vantage, is the province of all those who perceive and experience what is made. We are, almost all of us, musicians — everyone who can entrain (not necessarily dance) to a beat, who can recognize a repeated tune (not necessarily sing it), who can distinguish one instrument or one singing voice from another. I will often use an antique word, recently revived, to name this broader musical experience. Humans are musicking creatures. . . .

The set of capacities that enables musicking is a principal marker of modern humanity. There is nothing polemical in this assertion except a certain insistence, which will figure often in what follows, that musicking be included in our thinking about fundamental human commonalities. Capacities involved in musicking are many and take shape in complicated ways, arising from innate dispositions . . . Most of these capacities overlap with nonmusical ones, though a few may be distinct and dedicated to musical perception and production. In the area of overlap, linguistic capacities seem to be particularly important, and humans are (in principle) languagemakers in addition to music-makers — speaking creatures as well as musicking ones.

Humans are symbol-makers too, a feature tightly bound up with language, not so tightly with music. The species Cassirer dubbed Homo symbolicus cannot help but tangle musicking in webs of symbolic thought and expression, habitually making it a component of behavioral complexes that form such expression. But in fundamental features musicking is neither language-like nor symbol-like, and from these differences come many clues to its ancient emergence.

If musicking is a primary, shared trait of modern humans, then to describe its emergence must be to detail the coalescing of that modernity. This took place, archaeologists are clear, over a very long durée: at least 50,000 years or so, more likely something closer to 200,000, depending in part on what that coalescence is taken to comprise. If we look back 20,000
years, a small portion of this long period, we reach the lives of humans whose musical capacities were probably little different from our own. As we look farther back we reach
horizons where this similarity can no longer hold — perhaps 40,000 years ago, perhaps 70,000, perhaps 100,000. But we never cross a line before which all the cognitive capacities
recruited in modern musicking abruptly disappear. Unless we embrace the incredible notion that music sprang forth in full-blown glory, its emergence will have to be tracked in gradualist terms across a long period.

This is one general feature of a history of music’s emergence . . . The history was at once sociocultural and biological . . . The capacities recruited in musicking are many, so describing
its emergence involves following several or many separate strands.

Q.5 Which one of the following sets of terms best serves as keywords to the passage?

1. Humans; Musicking; Linguistic capacities; Symbol-making; Modern humanity.
2. Humans; Capacities; Language; Symbols; Modernity.
3. Humans; Psychological vantage; Musicking; Cassirer; Emergence of music.
4. Musicking; Cognitive psychology; Antique; Symbol-makers; Modernity

Option- 1

Q.6 “Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald statement . . .” In the context of the passage, what is the author trying to communicate in this quoted extract?

1. Thinking beyond qualifications allows us to give free reign to musical expressions.
2. A bald statement is one that requires no qualifications to infer its meaning.
3. Although there may be many caveats and other considerations, the statement is essentially true.
4. A bald statement is one that is trailed by a series of qualifying clarifications and caveats.

Solution- 3

Q.7 Based on the passage, which one of the following statements is a valid argument about the emergence of music/musicking?

1. Although musicking is not language-like, it shares the quality of being a form of expression.
2. 20,000 years ago, human musical capacities were not very different from what they are today.
3. Anyone who can perceive and experience music must be considered capable of musicking.
4. All musical work is located in the overlap between linguistic capacity and music production.

Solution- 2

Q.8 Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author’s claim that humans are musicking creatures?

1. Nonmusical capacities are of far greater consequence to human survival than the capacity for music.
2. As musicking is neither language-like nor symbol-like, it is a much older form of expression.
3. Musical capacities are primarily socio-cultural, which explains the wide diversity of musical forms.
4. From a cognitive and psychological vantage, musicking arises from unconscious dispositions, not conscious ones.

Solution- 3

Reading Comprehension 3

We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined.

It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . .

Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to
varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all
institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the
execution of any human design’[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all,
languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate

Q.10 “Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not.” Which one of the following statements best explains
this quote, in the context of the passage?

1. The stock exchange and the black market are examples of how, even within the same domain, different kinds of institutions can co-exist.
2. Market instruments can be formally traded in the stock exchange and informally traded in the black market.
3. The stock exchange and the black market are both organised to function by rules.
4. The stock exchange and the black market are both dependent on the market to survive.

Option- 1

Q.11 All of the following inferences from the passage are false, EXCEPT:

1. institutions like the family, rituals, governance, economy, and the military are natural and cannot be consciously modified.
2. “natural language” refers to that stage of language development where no conscious human intent is evident in the formation of language.
3. as concepts, “culture” and “tradition” have no analytical, explanatory or expository power, especially when they are treated in isolation.
4. the institution of friendship cannot be found in the institution of joint-stock companies because the first is an informal institution, while the second is a formal one

Option- 2

Q.12 In the first paragraph of the passage, what are the two “characterisations” that are seen as overlapping but not congruent?

1. “the philosophy of the social sciences” and “a set of social institutions”.
2. “individuals” and “social structures”.
3. “an arena of thought” and “academic disciplines”.
4. “academic disciplines” and “institutions”.

Option- 4

Reading Comprehension 4

[Octopuses are] misfits in their own extended families . . . They belong to the Mollusca class Cephalopoda. But they don’t look like their cousins at all. Other molluscs include sea snails, sea slugs, bivalves – most are shelled invertebrates with a dorsal foot. Cephalopods are all arms, and can be as tiny as 1 centimetre and as large at 30 feet. Some of them have brains the size of a walnut, which is large for an invertebrate. . . .

It makes sense for these molluscs to have added protection in the form of a higher cognition; they don’t have a shell covering them, and pretty much everything feeds on cephalopods, including humans. But how did cephalopods manage to secure their own invisibility cloak? Cephalopods fire from multiple cylinders to achieve this in varying degrees from species to species. There are four main catalysts – chromatophores, iridophores, papillae and
leucophores. . . .

[Chromatophores] are organs on their bodies that contain pigment sacs, which have red, yellow and brown pigment granules. These sacs have a network of radial muscles, meaning
muscles arranged in a circle radiating outwards. These are connected to the brain by a nerve. When the cephalopod wants to change colour, the brain carries an electrical impulse through the nerve to the muscles that expand outwards, pulling open the sacs to display the colours on the skin. Why these three colours? Because these are the colours the light reflects at the depths they live in (the rest is absorbed before it reaches those depths). . . .

Well, what about other colours? Cue the iridophores. Think of a second level of skin that has thin stacks of cells. These can reflect light back at different wavelengths. . . . It’s using the
same properties that we’ve seen in hologram stickers, or rainbows on puddles of oil. You move your head and you see a different colour. The sticker isn’t doing anything but reflecting light – it’s your movement that’s changing the appearance of the colour. This property of holograms, oil and other such surfaces is called “iridescence”. . . .

Papillae are sections of the skin that can be deformed to make a texture bumpy. Even humans possess them (goosebumps) but cannot use them in the manner that cephalopods
can. For instance, the use of these cells is how an octopus can wrap itself over a rock and appear jagged or how a squid or cuttlefish can imitate the look of a coral reef by growing
miniature towers on its skin. It actually matches the texture of the substrate it chooses.

Finally, the leucophores: According to a paper, published in Nature, cuttlefish and octopuses possess an additional type of reflector cell called a leucophore. They are cells that scatter full spectrum light so that they appear white in a similar way that a polar bear’s fur appears white. Leucophores will also reflect any filtered light shown on them . . . If the water appears blue at a certain depth, the octopuses and cuttlefish can appear blue; if the water appears green, they appear green, and so on and so forth.

Q.13 Which one of the following statements is not true about the camouflaging ability of Cephalopods?

1. Cephalopods can change their colour.
2. Cephalopods can take on the colour of their predator.
3. Cephalopods can blend into the colour of their surroundings.
4. Cephalopods can change their texture

Solution- 2

Q.14 All of the following are reasons for octopuses being “misfits” EXCEPT that they:

1. are consumed by humans and other animals.
2. do not possess an outer protective shell.
3. have several arms.
4. exhibit higher intelligence than other molluscs

Solution- 1

Q.15 Based on the passage, it can be inferred that camouflaging techniques in an octopus are most dissimilar to those in:

1. cuttlefish
2. polar bears
3. sea snails
4. squids

Solution- 3

Q.16 Based on the passage, we can infer that all of the following statements, if true, would weaken the camouflaging adeptness of Cephalopods EXCEPT:

1. the temperature of water at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders the transmission of neural signals difficult.
2. the hydrostatic pressure at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders radial muscle movements difficult.
3. light reflects the colours red, green, and yellow at the depths at which Cephalopods reside.
4. the number of chromatophores in Cephalopods is half the number of iridophores and leucophores.

Solution- 4

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Read More: CAT 2023- Slot 3 Reading Comprehension with Solution