- [Voiceover] Hello, my
name is Jennifer Riley, and I'm a cognitive scientist who studies text comprehension and reasoning. The goal of this video is to help you better understand the
new section of the MCAT, called the critical analysis
and reasoning skills section. Its main purpose is to figure out how well you can understand and reason
about the things you read. In this part of the test,
you'll read nine passages. Each one is about 500 to 600 words long, and you'll usually be asked between five to seven questions
about each passage. In total, you'll go through
53 questions in 90 minutes. That means you have about
10 minutes per passage, on average. In terms of the topics that
you'll be reading about, approximately half of these passages will come from the humanities, such as literature, philosophy or ethics. The other half will come
from social sciences, such as psychology,
sociology or economics. For example, one of the passages that's in the Khan Academy MCAT collection discusses how people negotiate
deals with one another, and when they believe they
are getting a fair deal. Another passage is about how computers, rather than just being
tools used by humans, might actually be changing
the way that humans think. The passages come from a
lot of different areas, and are meant to stretch your mind a bit. You'll probably find that the topics of these passages will be unfamiliar. You're not expected to already know about any of these topics. Sometimes the writing
styles will be complicated. Some words may be new to you, and some passages may
be tough to understand. Just remember, everything
that you need to know to answer the questions
will be in the passages. You're not expected to know
any background information. In fact, to do well, you
really need to just focus on the passage, and not information
that you already know from elsewhere. There are three types of
questions you'll be asked to answer in this section. The first type is called
foundations of comprehension. These questions mainly ask you to answer questions about the
author's intended message. They'll ask you about the overall idea, or about why the author used
specific words or phrases, or why the author organized
the passage in a specific way. The second category is called
reasoning within the text, and these questions
mainly ask you to think about the reasoning within
an author's argument, such as, what claim is an
author trying to support with a piece of evidence? Or, is an argument flawed? The third category is called
reasoning beyond the text. Questions in this
category ask you to apply ideas from the passage to new situations, or to think about how
the author's main message would change if there were
new information to consider. This new information will be
given to you in the question. About a third of the questions
will come from each category. You should expect about 30% foundations of comprehension questions, 30% reasoning within the text questions, and 40% reasoning beyond
the text questions. People often wonder how
the skills that are tested by the critical analysis
and reasoning skills section will ever be useful
for a future physician. These questions are on the MCAT because doctors need to be able to reason through a lot of clinical information. For example, these skills are needed when you need to analyze information to come up with a treatment
plan that makes sense for a patient, and also
so that you can explain your reasoning to others,
including the patient, family members, or other
members of your medical team. For more information on
this section of the test, and on each of the question types, be sure to see the other
videos in this section, which I hope will help you, too.