Digital SAT · Cross-Text Connections
How to Solve How New Evidence Affects Each Text on the Digital SAT
The prompt introduces a new finding and asks how it would bear on the claims in the two texts. The finding usually cuts differently for each author: supporting one while undercutting or not touching the other. The work is to test the same evidence against both positions and choose the option that gets both effects right. Traps state the impact on one author correctly but the other wrongly, or treat a neutral finding as decisive for a claim it does not affect.
- per test
- rarely on a test per test
- typical difficulty
- Medium to hard typical difficulty
- practice questions
- 41 practice questions
Frequency reflects how often this question type appears on a full-length Digital SAT. The difficulty mix reflects every question of this type across our bank.
What the question bank shows
The evidence must be tested against each author's position separately.
A finding can support one author and undercut or not touch the other.
Judging the effect on both texts at once makes just over half of these Hard.
How to recognize how new evidence affects each text questions
- A hypothetical finding or new study is presented in the prompt.
- The question asks how it affects the claims in Text 1 and Text 2.
- Answers describe the finding strengthening or weakening a position.
- The evidence often bears differently on the two authors.
Why students miss these
The step-by-step method
- 1
State both claims
Put each author's position in a phrase before reading the finding's effect.
- 2
Read the new finding
Understand exactly what the hypothetical evidence shows.
- 3
Test it on each claim
Decide whether the finding strengthens, weakens, or does not touch each author's position.
- 4
Match both effects
Choose the option that gets the impact right for both texts, not just one.
Worked examples
Medium example
Text 1
Explaining why woolly mammoths disappeared from northern Eurasia, some paleontologists attribute the extinction principally to a warming climate. As the last glacial period waned, they argue, the cold, arid steppe that sustained the enormous herds was progressively supplanted by waterlogged tundra and encroaching forest, fragmenting the grasslands the animals depended upon. Populations confined to dwindling habitable patches, they conclude, declined inexorably until they could no longer reproduce in sustainable numbers.
Text 2
Other paleontologists assign primary responsibility to intensifying human predation. Expanding bands of hunters, they contend, pursued mammoths relentlessly for their meat and ivory, and the slow-breeding giants could not replenish their numbers rapidly enough to withstand sustained losses. Climatic fluctuations may have contributed marginally, they acknowledge, yet the extinctions coincided most precisely with human arrival, so overhunting, in their judgment, remains the decisive cause.
A: Correct. A collapse timed to human arrival across separate regions directly supports Text 2's claim that overhunting, not climate, drove the extinction.
B: Incorrect. Grassland loss tied to warming supports Text 1's climate explanation, the opposite of the direction the question requests.
C: Incorrect. Lifespan and fertility alone are neutral facts that favor neither hunting nor climate as the decisive cause.
D: Incorrect. Hunters subsisting on other prey would weaken Text 2's predation explanation rather than support it.
Explanation
Text 1 blames warming; Text 2 blames hunting. A finding that population collapse tracked human arrival supports Text 2; grassland loss supports Text 1, while lifespan data are neutral and the diet finding cuts against Text 2.
Medium example
Text 1
Tracing the roots of a popular musical style, some historians locate its origin in rural folk tradition. The style's characteristic rhythms and modes, they argue, descend directly from songs sung for generations in remote farming villages, long before any recording existed. Its earliest practitioners, they note, learned their craft entirely within these isolated communities, suggesting an authentic folk lineage rather than a manufactured invention.
Text 2
Other historians contend that the style was largely fashioned in urban commercial recording studios. Professional arrangers and producers, they propose, deliberately blended disparate elements to craft a marketable sound and promoted it aggressively to city audiences. The supposed folk forms, they argue, actually appear only after the studios had popularized the style, so commercial invention, not rural tradition, gave it its shape.
A: Incorrect. Early village recordings of the tunes support Text 1's folk-origin explanation, the opposite of what is asked.
B: Correct. Producers engineering the sound from market surveys directly supports Text 2's claim of commercial invention.
C: Incorrect. The style's eventual commercial success is neutral and reveals nothing about where it originated.
D: Incorrect. Rural instruments predating the studios would support Text 1's folk explanation rather than Text 2's.
Explanation
Text 1 credits rural folk roots; Text 2 credits commercial studios. Producers building the sound from market research supports Text 2; early village recordings and rural instruments support Text 1, and sales are neutral.
Medium example
Text 1
Debating the age of Saturn's spectacular rings, some astronomers argue that they are nearly as ancient as the planet itself. The rings, they propose, condensed from leftover material in the same disk that formed Saturn roughly four billion years ago and have persisted, continually recycled, ever since. Such longevity, they contend, best explains how a structure so massive and elaborate could exist, since rebuilding it later would be highly improbable.
Text 2
Other astronomers maintain that the rings are a strikingly recent addition, perhaps only a hundred million years old. The ice composing them, they note, remains remarkably bright and uncontaminated, whereas ancient rings should long ago have been darkened by accumulating cosmic dust. This pristine brightness, they argue, indicates a youthful origin, possibly the comparatively recent shattering of a passing moon or comet.
A: Incorrect. Indefinite recycling supports Text 1's ancient-rings account, the opposite of the direction requested.
B: Incorrect. The rings' overall composition is neutral and distinguishes neither an ancient nor a youthful origin.
C: Incorrect. Formation from the primordial disk supports Text 1's ancient origin rather than Text 2's recent one.
D: Correct. Ice too clean to have gathered much dust directly supports Text 2's claim that the rings are geologically young.
Explanation
Text 1 credits an ancient origin; Text 2 credits a recent one. Ice too clean to have gathered dust supports Text 2; recycling and primordial formation support Text 1, and composition is neutral.
The common traps
| Pattern | What it does | The tell |
|---|---|---|
| One effect wrong | Gets the impact on one author right and the other wrong. | Test the finding against both claims separately before choosing. |
| Overstated relevance | Treats a neutral finding as decisive for a claim it does not touch. | Ask whether the finding actually bears on that specific position. |
| Reversed direction | Says the finding supports a claim it actually undercuts. | Check whether the evidence makes each claim more or less believable. |
Try it: two real questions
Text 1 Text 2
Explaining why a flourishing ancient city was abruptly abandoned, some archaeologists blame a devastating, prolonged drought. A decades-long failure of the seasonal rains, they argue, would have withered the surrounding farmland and emptied the reservoirs on which the dense urban population utterly depended. The city was deserted, they note, during precisely the span when independent climate records register the region's most severe and sustained dry spell, tying the collapse to environmental catastrophe.
Other archaeologists contend that a sudden military conquest emptied the city instead. A rival power, they propose, stormed and sacked the settlement, slaughtering or scattering its inhabitants and leaving the survivors little choice but to flee. The drought may have weakened the city beforehand, they concede, but it was the violence of invasion, in their reading, that delivered the decisive and final blow.
Based on the texts, which of the following findings, if true, would most strongly support the explanation proposed in Text 2 rather than the alternative advanced in Text 1?
Text 1 Text 2
Debating who actually composed a celebrated series of political letters, some historians credit the famous statesman whose name they bear. The letters' distinctive turns of phrase and their intimate knowledge of private negotiations, they argue, could only have flowed from the statesman's own pen. Their forceful, idiosyncratic style, they contend, matches his acknowledged speeches so closely that no other hand seems remotely plausible.
Other historians maintain that a trusted secretary drafted the letters on the statesman's behalf. Powerful figures of the era, they note, routinely dictated only the gist of their correspondence and left the actual phrasing to skilled assistants trained for exactly that purpose. The letters' polished uniformity, they argue, suggests a professional scribe rather than the uneven hand of a busy and frequently distracted public official.
Based on the texts, which of the following findings, if true, would most strongly support the explanation proposed in Text 1 rather than the alternative advanced in Text 2?
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Common questions
How do you handle new-evidence questions on the SAT?
State each author's claim, understand the new finding, then judge how it affects each claim, strengthen, weaken, or neither. Pick the option that gets both effects right; a choice correct for only one author is wrong.
Why must I check both texts?
The finding usually cuts differently for each author. A choice can describe the impact on one claim accurately while misjudging the other, so both directions have to be verified independently.
What if the finding does not affect one author?
That is common and legitimate. Evidence can be decisive for one claim and irrelevant to the other. Do not overstate its relevance; if it does not bear on a position, say so.
How is this different from a single-text evidence question?
A single-text question weighs a finding against one claim. Here you run the same evidence through two claims and match both effects, which adds a second direction to get right.
Practice how new evidence affects each text the way it is tested
Start with the free 16-question diagnostic, then drill this type with step-by-step reasoning on every question.
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