Some studies have suggested that posture can inﬂuence cognition, but we should not overstate this phenomenon. A case in
point: In a 2014 study, Megan O’Brien and Alaa Ahmed had subjects stand or sit while making risky simulated economic
decisions. Standing is more physically unstable and cognitively demanding than sitting; accordingly, O’Brien and Ahmed
hypothesized that standing subjects would display more risk aversion during the decision-making tasks than sitting subjects
did, since they would want to avoid further feelings of discomfort and complicated risk evaluations. But O’Brien and Ahmed
actually found no difference in the groups’ performance.
It argues that research ﬁndings about the effects of posture on cognition are often misunderstood, as in the case of
O’Brien and Ahmed’s study.
It presents the study by O’Brien and Ahmed to critique the methods and results reported in previous studies of the effects
of posture on cognition.
It explains a signiﬁcant problem in the emerging understanding of posture’s effects on cognition and how O’Brien and
Ahmed tried to solve that problem.
It discusses the study by O’Brien and Ahmed to illustrate why caution is needed when making claims about the effects of
Choice D is the best answer because it most accurately describes the main purpose of the text. The text notes that although
some studies have suggested that posture may have an effect on cognition, this phenomenon should not be overstated. In
other words, the text begins by urging caution and restraint when discussing the effects of posture on cognition, implying
that even though some studies have shown posture to affect cognition, we should not assume that posture always affects
cognition or does so in a strong way. The text goes on to discuss O’Brien and Ahmed’s study as a "case in point" (that is, as
an example of the point made previously). According to the text, O’Brien and Ahmed hypothesized that since standing is
more cognitively demanding than sitting, standing subjects in their experiment would respond differently to decision-making
tasks than sitting subjects would, which would show an effect of posture on cognition. What the researchers actually found,
however, was that the standing and sitting subjects performed the same—posture did not affect cognition. By presenting a
circumstance in which posture does not appear to affect cognition, the discussion of O’Brien and Ahmed’s study shows why
it is important not to overstate the phenomenon. The purpose of the text, therefore, is to discuss O’Brien and Ahmed’s study
to illustrate why caution is needed when making claims about posture’s effects on cognition.
Choice A is incorrect because the text discusses O’Brien and Ahmed’s study as an example of why caution is needed when
discussing posture’s effects on cognition, not as an example of how research ﬁndings related to posture and cognition are