by giladedelman Sat Sep 24, 2011 12:19 pm
Thanks for posting!
Two things.
1) To answer your general question, there is no law that says every sentence in the stimulus must play an important role. In fact, a huge portion of LR stimuli have components that are entirely superfluous. It's our job to separate the relevant from the irrelevant. On an inference question, like this one, our job is simply to pick the answer that's most supported by the statements, whichever statements end up providing that support.
2) When it comes to this sentence specifically, I actually don't think the line you mentioned is irrelevant, per se; rather, it is explaining how the jurors ended up mirroring the judge's opinion. But, you are right that we don't need it to support answer (E). That's fine.
So (E) is correct because we know that when the instruction is all technical jargon, jurors tend to mirror the judge's opinion, but when the instruction is in clear language, they are more likely to give their own opinion. So the way in which juries are instructed can influence their opinions.
(A) is incorrect because we don't know which is more precise.
(B) is incorrect because we know nothing about the connection between influence and status.
(C) is out because the effectiveness of nonverbal communication doesn't get addressed; in fact, all we have is one example of nonverbal communication succeeding in influencing an opinion. But we don't know whether it's effective overall or not.
(D) is out because this is about mock trials the whole time.
Does that answer your question?