The number and size of the brain's nerve endings continue to grow till:

Concept

A literal-comprehension question is settled by the passage itself, not by outside knowledge: find the sentence that makes the same claim as the stem, and read the time limit or qualifier attached to that particular claim. A developmental passage normally carries several time markers, and each one belongs to a different process, so the marker has to be matched to the exact process the question names.

Application

1. The stem asks how long the number and size of the brain’s nerve endings keep growing, so the process to match is the growth of nerve endings.

2. The passage states that claim directly: “The number and size of the brain’s nerve endings continue to grow at least until adolescence.”

3. The qualifier attached to that claim is “at least until adolescence”, so the stage named as the limit of that growth is adolescence.

Cross-check

The passage’s other time markers belong to other processes, which is where the near-miss stages come from:

• about four years of age — myelination in the areas related to hand-eye co-ordination is not complete until then;

• the end of the elementary school years — myelination in the areas important for focusing attention is not complete until then;

• early childhood — the stage at which children have the most difficulty focusing attention and maintaining it;

• adulthood — the passage never extends its account that far, since its statement about nerve-ending growth stops at adolescence.

Matching the process named in the stem to its own marker therefore gives adolescence.