Assessing the Impact of Incorporating New Factors, Information, or Conditions on Ideas from the Passage
The essential difference between application and incorporation skills is that the two-part purpose of incorporation questions is to introduce a specific piece of information for you to consider and ask you to assess how ideas in the passage might be affected by its introduction. The premise of these questions is that ideas and information in the passages are potentially malleable, not a fixed framework, as in application questions.
In some incorporation questions, you must find the best answer to a “what if” question by reinterpreting and reassessing passage content with the additional fact or idea introduced by the question. Does the new information support or contradict the inherent logic of the passage? Could the new information coexist with what is already in the passage, or would it negate an aspect of the author’s argument? If the latter is the case, the question could ask what modifications or alterations might need to be made to the passage content to accommodate the new element introduced by the question. Remember, the passage should be considered malleable.
Other forms of incorporation questions may ask you to think about a possible logical relationship that might exist between the passage content and the facts or assertions included in the answer options. The task is to select the one option that, if added to the passage content, would result in the least amount of change. The correct response option will present the situation or argument that is most similar to what is outlined in the passage. In other words, you must determine which new fact or assertion would least alter the central thesis the passage has developed.