%%

A study published in the journal Nature Communications suggests that people who have a high level of curiosity are more likely to engage in "purposeless" information-seeking behaviors: that is, seeking out information even when they know that they won’t benefit from it. This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive—a desire to acquire information for its own sake, rather than a means to an end. This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive—a desire to acquire information for its own sake, rather than a means to an end.

SAT · English · previous-year question

  1. A.This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive, a desire to acquire information for its own sake, rather than a means to an end.
  2. B.This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive, a desire to acquire information for its own sake, rather than a means to an end.
  3. C.This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive, a desire to acquire information for its own sake rather than a means to an end.correct
  4. D.This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive: a desire to acquire information for its own sake, rather than a means to an end.

Answer

C. This finding, the researchers say, supports the idea that curiosity is an intrinsic drive, a desire to acquire information for its own sake rather than a means to an end.

Explanation

The best way to combine the sentences is to remove the comma and the dash and replace them with the word “rather.” This is because no punctuation is needed between the preposition “for” and its complement, the noun phrase “its own sake.”

Practice more SAT questions

Answer thousands more real SAT previous-year questions free, get graded instantly, and climb the global ranked leaderboard.

Practice SAT free →

More SAT English questions