"A recent study of eighteen rhesus monkeys provides clues as to the effects of birth order on an individual's levels of stimulation. The study showed that in stimulating situations (such as an encounter with an unfamiliar monkey), firstborn infant monkeys produce up to twice as much of the hormone cortisol, which primes the body for increased activity levels, as do their younger siblings. Firstborn humans also produce relatively high levels of cortisol in stimulating situations (such as the return of a parent after an absence). The study also found that during pregnancy, first-time mother monkeys had higher levels of cortisol than did those who had had several offspring."
There are multiple fallacies and unexplained claims in the argument. The sample of 18 rhesus monkeys may not be a good representative of the whole rhesus species. A biased sample could have been drawn from the population. Like, for example, the group of scientists could have selected those monkeys that they saw were friendly or were easily caught and extracted from their natural habitat. Furthermore, there is no mention on the sufficiency of the sample of rhesus monkeys that were collected. It may be the case that only 18 monkeys could have been collected yet and the further process seemed to be futile, hence the experiment was initiated with only the 18 available monkeys.
The writer claims, in one of the stimulating conditions, the encounter with an unfamiliar monkey, but fails to provide evidence whether this encounter was among the 18 considered monkeys or was it like one of these 18 monkeys had an encounter with some random monkey. Also, it is pretty unclear whether both the monkeys were of rhesus species. Moreover, the monkey could have been familiar, in the first place, with the other monkey, before the monkey was collected but the scientists could have ignored this fact.
In the above argument, the writer claims that the cortisol hormone is produced in higher amounts when the new born results from the stimulating situations between the parents. There are only two mentioned stimulating situations. The writer fails to mention the exhaustive set of stimulating situations that were considered for the specific research. One could consider a particular situation as a stimulating situation while someone else may consider some other situation. Therefore, it is pretty unclear which set of stimulations can be considered as stimulating conditions.
The writer claims that in humans the stimulating conditions such as the return of a parent after an absence also produces high level of cortisol in the offspring. This arises an ambiguity regarding the duration of absence. There is no mention about how long a typical absence should be for a stimulating situation. The absence could be of 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month. It is, therefore, not necessary that in all the above cases, there could be a stimulating situation.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/story/gre-argument-essay-topic-2-outline
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 368 350
No. of Characters: 1834 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.38 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.984 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.708 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.368 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.477 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.508 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...here could be a stimulating situation.
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, hence, if, may, moreover, regarding, so, therefore, while, for example, such as, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1890.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 368.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.13586956522 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37987740619 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80295718806 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.470108695652 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 586.8 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 56.0149366704 57.8364921388 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 99.4736842105 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.3684210526 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.84210526316 5.70786347227 120% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.235732926628 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0687641473437 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0680138644261 0.0701772020484 97% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14426625425 0.128457276422 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.083357508273 0.0628817314937 133% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.5 14.3799401198 87% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.53 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.1 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.