SAT Reading and Writing Practice Test: Inferences
- Inferences
- 10 questions
- 12 minutes
These 10 questions practice Inferences, an Information and Ideas skill on the digital SAT. The correct ending follows from the facts in the passage alone; reject any choice that needs outside assumptions or goes beyond what the text supports.
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Question 1
Honeybees share the location of food through a "waggle dance," a pattern of movements whose angle and length indicate direction and distance. Because the dance is performed on the comb inside the dark hive, the other bees most likely follow it mainly by ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: B
In darkness the bees cannot rely on sight, so touch and vibration are the logical way to follow the dance. The other choices all depend on seeing, which the dark hive rules out.
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Question 2
A city painted new bike lanes on Elm Street in March. Over the next six months, bicycle traffic on Elm Street doubled, but the total amount of bicycle traffic across the city did not change. These results suggest that the new lanes ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: B
If Elm Street gained riders while the city total stayed the same, those riders must have moved from other streets. New cyclists would have raised the city total, and the doubling on Elm Street shows that the lanes did have an effect.
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Question 3
Pottery fragments found at a coastal settlement are made from a clay that does not occur anywhere within 300 kilometers of the site. Archaeologists also found no kilns, unfired pieces or other signs of pottery making at the settlement. The people who lived there therefore most likely ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: C
Clay from far away and no evidence of local production point to pottery brought in from elsewhere. The first choice contradicts the clay evidence, and the fragments themselves show the people did use pottery.
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Question 4
In a small town, most jobs depended on a single paper mill. When the mill closed in 2019, the town's population fell by about a fifth over the next three years, while towns of similar size in the same county grew slightly. This contrast suggests that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: B
The town shrank right after the mill closed while similar nearby towns grew, which points to the closure as a likely cause. The nearby towns grew, so the county did not clearly lose residents, and nothing is said about the years before 2019.
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Question 5
In a greenhouse experiment, plants received the same amount of water but different amounts of light each day. Plants that received more light grew taller, but only up to a point: beyond about 12 hours of light per day, extra light produced no additional growth. For these plants, once they received more than 12 hours of light, ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: A
If more light stops adding growth, something else, such as water or nutrients, must be setting the limit. "No additional growth" is not the same as harm, so the damage choice goes beyond the evidence.
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Question 6
Scholars long assumed that a 19th-century novelist wrote her books quickly, since she published six novels in eight years. However, her recently discovered letters show that she had drafted most of these novels many years earlier and spent a long time revising them before publication. The letters therefore suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: D
Drafts written years earlier and long revisions mean the work took much longer than six books in eight years suggests. The letters directly contradict the idea that she rarely revised.
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Question 7
When a coffee chain raised the price of its large drink by 20 percent, sales of the large size fell sharply, while sales of the medium size rose by almost the same number of cups. The total number of cups the chain sold stayed about the same. These results suggest that many customers ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: C
The drop in large drinks was matched by a rise in medium drinks while total cups stayed the same, which fits customers moving to the smaller size. If customers had stopped buying, total sales would have fallen.
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Question 8
Astronomers detect many planets around other stars by watching for a tiny dip in a star's brightness as a planet passes in front of it. This method works only when the planet's orbit is lined up so that, seen from Earth, the planet crosses the face of its star. As a result, the planets found with this method are most likely ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: D
Planets whose orbits are not lined up with our view never cross their star, so the method misses them. Nothing in the text says anything about the planets' size, direction of orbit or brightness.
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Question 9
In a study of language learning, adults who practiced new vocabulary in short sessions spread over several days remembered more words a month later than adults who practiced for the same total time in one long session. Both groups did equally well on a test given right after practice. These results suggest that spacing out practice ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: A
The groups differed a month later but not right after practice, so the benefit of spacing appears over time. The equal immediate scores rule out the second choice, and the study involved adults, not children.
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Question 10
Glaciers can carry rocks hundreds of kilometers from where they formed and leave them behind when the ice melts. In fields in central Ohio, geologists have found large boulders of a rock type that occurs naturally only far to the north, in Canada. The presence of these boulders suggests that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Correct answer: C
The text explains that glaciers move rocks far from their source, so Canadian boulders in Ohio point to ice that reached Ohio from the north. The rock does not form in Ohio, which rules out the first two choices.
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