Section: Verbal

40) Fact 1: Television advertising is becoming less effective: the promotion of brand names promoted on television that viewers of the advertising can recall is slowly decreasing.

Fact 2: Television viewers recall commercials aired first or last in a cluster of consecutive commercials far better than they recall commercials aired somewhere in the middle.

Fact 2 would be most likely to contribute to an explanation of fact 1 if which of the following were also true?

1. The total time allotted to the average cluster of consecutive television commercials is decreasing.
2. The average number of clusters of consecutive commercials per hour of television is increasing.
3. The average number of hours per day that people spend watching television is decreasing.
4. The average number of television commercials in a cluster of consecutive commercials is increasing.
5. The average television viewer currently recalls fewer than half the brand names promoted in commercials he or she saw.
6. No Answer Selected

The fourth choice indicates that the number of commercials in a cluster is increasing, so it entails that proportionally more commercials are aired in intermediate positions. Hence, the last choice helps fact 2 explain fact 1 by showing that increasingly more commercials are aired in positions in which viewers find them difficult to recall. This is the best answer.