Which of the following， if true， best explains the sharp rise in the average price of new houses？
（A） Sales of higher-priced houses were unaffected by the sales drop because their purchasers have fewer constraints limiting the total amount they pay.
（B） Labor agreements of builders with construction unions are not due to expire until the next January.
（C） The prices of new houses have been rising slowly over the past three years because there is an increasing shortage of housing.
（D） There was a greater amount of moderate-priced housing available for resale by owners during January than in the preceding three months.
（E） Interest rates for home mortgages are expected to rise sharply later in the year if predictions of increased business activity in general prove to be accurate.
2.An experiment was done in which human subjects recognize a pattern within a matrix of abstract designs and then select another design that completes that pattern. The results of the experiment were surprising. The lowest expenditure of energy in neurons in the brain was found in those subjects who performed most successfully in the experiments.
Which of the following hypotheses best accounts for the findings of the experiment？
（A） The neurons of the brain react less when a subject is trying to recognize patterns than when the subject is doing other kinds of reasoning.
（B） Those who performed best in the experiment experienced more satisfaction when working with abstract patterns than did those who performed less well.
（C） People who are better at abstract pattern recognition have more energyefficient neural connections.
（D） The energy expenditure of the subjects brains increases when a design that completes the initially recognized pattern is determined.
（E） The task of completing a given design is more capably performed by athletes， whose energy expenditure is lower when they are at rest than is that of the general population.
3.Archaeologists have found wheeled ceramic toys made by the Toltec， twelfth-century inhabitants of what is now Veracruz. Although there is no archaeological evidence that the Toltec used wheels for anything but toys， some anthropologists hypothesize that wheeled utility vehicles were used to carry materials needed for the monumental structures the Toltec produced.Which of the following， if true， would most help the anthropologists explain the lack of evidence noted above？
（A） The Toltec sometimes incorporated into their toys representations of utensils or other devices that served some practical purpose.
（B） Any wheeled utility vehicles used by the Toltec could have been made entirely of wood， and unlike ceramic， wood decays rapidly in the humid climate of Veracruz.
（C） Carvings in monument walls suggest that the Toltec's wheeled ceramic toys somtimes had ritual uses in addition to being used by both children and adults as decorations and playthings.
（D） Wheeled utility vehicles were used during the twelfth century in many areas of the world， but during this time wheeled toys were not very common in areas outside Veracruz.
（E） Some of the wheeled ceramic toys were found near the remains of monumental stuctures.
