ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by commonly misunderstood disorders.

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Just because you have a multiple personality disorder

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does not automatically make you a half-cop,

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half-serial killer.

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Not good. All right, check out the following passage.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right. Well, according to this passage, a person with

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autism might... what?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ meow ] [ mumbles ]

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All right, well, autism is one of those disorders that we

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hear a lot about and, well,

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now that we think about it, yeah, we know a lot about it

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too. Now, anyway.

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One thing we do know is that Dustin Hoffman

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won an Academy Award for Rain Man.

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But that's for another time.

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We need to just focus on information that's

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directly mentioned in this passage.

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So, okay, the passage makes no mention of IQ scores.

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So it can't be implying a person with autism

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would be lower than average IQ.

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You can't make an inference based on zero information.

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Even the cops on NCIS know something.

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So B is out. Anyway, moving on.

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The passage states that individuals with autism

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tend to have restricted interests,

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which is kind of the exact opposite of being

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fascinated by a wide range of subjects.

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Wide and restricted so rarely go well together.

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So option C is incorrect. Option D can go, as well.

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The passage makes no mention of

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artistic savants.

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So, while there's a popular conception that people with autism

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have brilliant artistic abilities or are inexplicably talented

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crime solvers, well, the fact is that

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it's not even referenced in the passage, so

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it's implied that it's not implied. Okay.

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What the passage does state is that autism

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is characterized by difficulty with

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communication and social interaction,

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which would imply that a person with the disorder would be

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reluctant to interact with people.

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Just like the correct answer, option A.

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Next up - bipolar disorder.

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And, no, it doesn't turn people into magnets.

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[ meow ]

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