The short answer
Two question types people confuse — and the precise difference that gets you the mark.
Written and checked by GAMSAT tutors — not AI-generated.
Try the reasoning style
We treat forgetting as a failure — a lapse to be patched with reminders and records. Yet a mind that kept everything could not think; it would drown in the undifferentiated noise of every moment it had ever lived. To forget is not so much to lose information as to decide, mostly without our noticing, what was never worth keeping.
The author's argument relies most directly on which unstated assumption?
Pick an option to see how the tutor reasons to the answer — not just whether you were right.
Not quite — the answer is B.
Work backwards from the conclusion: a mind that ‘kept everything’ supposedly ‘could not think.’ That only follows if thinking means leaving most of experience out — so B is the premise the argument quietly rests on. A raises reliability, which the passage never weighs; C contradicts ‘mostly without our noticing’; D smuggles in a claim about intellect the passage never makes. The question rewards finding the hidden premise, not recalling a fact.
"What can you infer?" and "What does the author assume?" feel similar but point in opposite directions. Mixing them up is one of the most common Section I errors.
Opposite directions
Inference — follows FROM the text
- A conclusion the text supports
- Comes AFTER the argument
- Must be true if the passage is true
- You read it OUT of what's written
Assumption — required BY the argument
- An unstated premise the argument needs
- Sits UNDER the argument
- If false, the argument collapses
- You supply what's MISSING but needed
The one-line test
Inference: does it follow from the passage? Assumption: does the argument depend on it — would it fall apart if this weren't true?
Same passage, two questions
"The new bridge cut commute times, so the council's transport plan is working." Identify one inference and one assumption.
Check yourself
An argument concludes a café will succeed because it has great coffee. Which is an unstated ASSUMPTION it relies on?
Key takeaways
- Inference follows FROM the text; assumption is required BY the argument.
- Test an assumption by negating it — does the argument collapse?
- Inferences must be supported; don't pick something merely plausible.
- Read the question stem carefully — the two are easy to swap.
Practise this with real GAMSAT-style questions
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