How does the illustration contribute to the meaning of the story?

Humans are the only animals capable of communication

It is widely assumed that people need to engage in intellectual activities such as solving crossword puzzles or mathematics problems in order to maintain mental sharpness as they age. in fact, however, simply talking to other people—that is, participating in social interaction, which engages many mental and perceptual skills—suffices. evidence to this effect comes from a study showing that the more social contact people report, the better their mental skills. which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the force of the evidence cited? (a) as people grow older, they are often advised to keep exercising their physical and mental capacities in order to maintain or improve them. (b) many medical conditions and treatments that adversely affect a person's mental sharpness also tend to increase that person's social isolation. (c) many people are proficient both in social interactions and in solving mathematical problems. (d) the study did not itself collect data but analyzed data bearing on the issue from prior studies. (e) the tasks evaluating mental sharpness for which data were compiled by the study were more akin to mathematics problems than to conversation.

The authors of the paper "fudging the numbers: distributing chocolate influences student evaluations of an undergraduate course"† carried out a study to see if events unrelated to an undergraduate course could affect student evaluations. students enrolled in statistics courses taught by the same instructor participated in the study. all students attended the same lectures and one of six discussion sections that met once a week. at the end of the course, the researchers chose three of the discussion sections to be the "chocolate group." students in these three sections were offered chocolate prior to having them fill out course evaluations. students in the other three sections were not offered chocolate. the researchers concluded that "overall, students offered chocolate gave more positive evaluations than students not offered chocolate." indicate whether the study is an observational study or an experiment. give a brief explanation for your choice.