PracticeRCCAT VARC · Reading Comprehension
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Economics · Social theory4 questions497 wordsA CAT-pattern set: one argumentative passage, four questions, four options each. Original passage written for PracticeRC. Answer all four, then check - you will see your score and the right answer for every question.
The phrase 'attention economy' has become familiar enough that its strangeness now goes unremarked. Economies allocate scarce resources among competing uses, and attention is certainly scarce: a reader who spends an hour with one argument has not spent it with another. To that extent the metaphor earns its keep. What it obscures is the peculiarity of the transaction it names. In an ordinary market the party who surrenders the scarce good is paid for it. Here the person whose attention is taken receives nothing, and the payment passes between two other parties entirely - the platform that harvested the attention and the advertiser who wanted it. The supplier of the commodity is not party to the sale.
This is not a quibble about terminology. It accounts for a pattern that otherwise looks like a series of unrelated failures. Were suppliers of attention paid, the things that commanded attention most reliably would tend to be the things people most valued having attended to, and competition would push platforms towards producing them. Because suppliers are not paid, the discipline runs in another direction altogether: what wins is whatever is hardest to look away from, which is a different property and frequently an opposed one. Outrage is not valued by those who feel it; it is merely difficult to ignore.
It is tempting to locate the problem in the technology, but the structure long predates it. Commercial broadcasting worked the same way, and the complaints made of it in the 1950s read almost identically. What changed was not the shape of the arrangement but its resolution: a broadcaster could measure only how many households had a set switched on, whereas a platform can establish which sentence made a particular reader stop scrolling, and adjust within the hour. The incentive did not alter; the precision with which it could be pursued did, and that has turned out to be the difference that matters.
Defenders of the arrangement reply that users are compensated, merely not in money - they receive the service free of charge. The reply is not empty, but it establishes less than it appears to. A bargain in which one party cannot price what they are giving up is not obviously a bargain at all, and attention is unusually resistant to pricing. Its costs are diffuse, deferred and difficult to attribute: nobody can say which particular hour of scrolling displaced the book they never read, which is precisely why no such hour ever feels expensive.
The deeper difficulty is that attention is not simply a resource one spends. It is also the faculty by which one determines what is worth spending it on. A market that erodes the good it trades in is not merely inefficient in the ordinary sense; it degrades the very capacity that would be required to notice the erosion and object to it. Whether an economy can remain an economy on those terms is a question its participants are, by construction, poorly placed to answer.
Question 1 of 4
Which of the following best states the central claim of the passage?
- ADigital platforms have made the attention economy considerably more exploitative than commercial broadcasting ever was.
- BThe attention economy is misnamed because the party supplying the scarce good is not party to the transaction, and that structural feature accounts for its characteristic failures.
- CUsers of digital platforms are inadequately compensated for the attention they give up.
- DAttention cannot properly be treated as an economic resource, since it resists pricing.
A - wrong: The third paragraph says the opposite of what this needs: 'the incentive did not alter; the precision with which it could be pursued did'. The change is one of resolution, not of kind, and the 1950s complaints 'read almost identically'. The passage also never grades the two arrangements for exploitativeness.
B - correct: This joins the two halves the passage actually argues. The first paragraph establishes the anomaly - 'the supplier of the commodity is not party to the sale' - and the second says why it matters: 'it accounts for a pattern that otherwise looks like a series of unrelated failures.' Everything after develops that claim rather than adding a new one.
C - wrong: Too narrow, and it misreports the author's position. The passage grants that the free-service reply 'is not empty' and objects on a different ground - that attention cannot be priced by the person giving it up - rather than arguing the compensation is merely too small.
D - wrong: Overshoots a concession the passage explicitly makes. It accepts that attention is scarce and that 'to that extent the metaphor earns its keep'. The objection is to who the parties to the transaction are, not to treating attention as a resource at all.
Question 2 of 4
It can be inferred that the author regards the 'free of charge' defence as:
- Adisingenuous, given that the services are funded by advertising and so are not truly costless.
- Bpartially valid, but insufficient, because the party giving up the good cannot assess what it costs them.
- Cbeside the point, since the passage is concerned with broadcasting rather than with digital platforms.
- Dconvincing as regards users, though not as regards advertisers.
A - wrong: The author never questions the defenders' honesty, and the advertising funding is presented as a structural fact in paragraph one rather than as a concealed cost being exposed here. 'The reply is not empty' rules out disingenuousness.
B - correct: Both halves are stated. 'The reply is not empty, but it establishes less than it appears to' grants the partial validity; the reason follows immediately - 'a bargain in which one party cannot price what they are giving up is not obviously a bargain at all'.
C - wrong: Broadcasting appears once, as evidence that the structure predates the technology. The passage is about both, and it engages the defence directly over a full paragraph rather than dismissing it as off-topic.
D - wrong: Advertisers are named only as the party that pays. The passage never evaluates the defence from their side, and it is users for whom the author says the bargain is questionable - so this reverses the one assessment actually offered.
Question 3 of 4
The author would agree with all of the following EXCEPT:
- AWhat holds attention most reliably need not be what people value having attended to.
- BThe incentives facing broadcasters and those facing platforms differ in kind rather than in degree.
- CThe cost of spending attention is difficult to attribute to any particular episode of spending.
- DAttention serves both as something expended and as the means of deciding what to expend it on.
A - wrong: Supported, and it is the hinge of the second paragraph: what wins is 'whatever is hardest to look away from, which is a different property and frequently an opposed one', illustrated by outrage that is 'not valued by those who feel it'.
B - correct: The one claim the passage denies. It states plainly that 'the incentive did not alter; the precision with which it could be pursued did' - a difference of degree. Note that the passage does call that difference decisive, which is what makes this option tempting: being the difference that matters is not the same as being a difference in kind.
C - wrong: Supported almost word for word: the costs are 'diffuse, deferred and difficult to attribute', and 'nobody can say which particular hour of scrolling displaced the book they never read'.
D - wrong: Supported by the final paragraph: attention 'is not simply a resource one spends. It is also the faculty by which one determines what is worth spending it on.' The whole closing argument depends on it.
Question 4 of 4
The final sentence of the passage ('Whether an economy can remain an economy on those terms ... poorly placed to answer') primarily serves to:
- Apropose a programme of research into the effects of digital platforms on their users.
- Brestate the author's earlier objection to the market metaphor in stronger terms.
- Cdraw out a self-undermining consequence of the argument just made.
- Dconcede that the author's own case cannot be settled on the available evidence.
A - wrong: No research is proposed anywhere, and the sentence points the other way - it says the participants are badly placed to answer, which frames a difficulty rather than setting an agenda.
B - wrong: Close, and the near-miss worth pausing on. The earlier objection concerned who the parties to the transaction are. This sentence introduces something new - that the damage falls on the faculty needed to detect the damage - so it extends the argument rather than restating it.
C - correct: It follows from the claim immediately before it: a market that 'degrades the very capacity that would be required to notice the erosion and object to it' leaves its participants unable to judge it, which is exactly what 'by construction, poorly placed to answer' asserts.
D - wrong: The limitation is attributed to the participants in the economy, not to the author or to the state of the evidence. Nothing in the sentence retreats from the argument; it presses it.
Unlimited, CAT-level RC on the articles you already read
The standard advice for CAT VARC is to read dense non-fiction daily - philosophy, economics, science, and literary essays. The problem is that reading alone has no feedback loop: you finish an article with no idea whether you actually understood it. PracticeRC closes that loop. Paste the essay you just read and turn it into a timed, scored RC set with four answer options in the CAT pattern.
Because passages are generated on demand, you are never limited to a fixed bank of 500 or 800 questions. That matters most in the final weeks before CAT, when serious aspirants have already exhausted every static resource and have nothing new left to practice on.
Turn an article into a CAT RC testWhat CAT VARC reading comprehension actually tests
CAT RC rewards precise reading, not speed-reading. Across four passages, the questions cluster into a handful of predictable types. Practicing each type deliberately - rather than grinding random passages - is what moves accuracy from the low 60s into the 80s.
- Main idea & primary purpose - what the passage is chiefly trying to do.
- Inference - what must be true given the passage, without over-reaching.
- Tone & attitude - the author's stance toward the subject.
- Paragraph / structure function - why a particular sentence or example is there.
- Detail & vocabulary-in-context - stated facts and word meaning from context.
For a full breakdown, see our guide to RC question types and the pillar on CAT VARC preparation.
CAT RC vs GMAT RC: how the formats differ
Many aspirants prepare for both exams. The reading skill is the same, but the format and passage style differ - which is why PracticeRC lets you switch between CAT (four options) and GMAT (five options) modes.
| Dimension | CAT RC (VARC) | GMAT Focus RC (Verbal) |
|---|---|---|
| Answer options | 4 options | 5 options |
| Passage style | Contemporary, opinion, abstract essays | Formal academic - science, business, social science |
| Question style | More interpretive and inference-heavy | Direct, structured, purpose-driven |
| Passage length | ~500–700 words | Up to ~350 words |
| What wins marks | Speed and accuracy together | Accuracy over speed |
Want the real thing? Browse all 60 CAT RC previous year passages (2021-2025) and the CAT VA previous year questions.
Preparing for the GMAT too? Try GMAT RC practice or read GMAT vs CAT reading comprehension.
A simple daily CAT RC routine
- Pick one dense article - an editorial, an Aeon essay, or an economics piece.
- Paste it into PracticeRC, choose CAT, and generate a four-option RC set.
- Solve it against a timer (aim for 8–10 minutes per passage).
- Review every option explanation - especially the distractors you nearly picked.
- Repeat with a different genre the next day to build range.
Want passages from a specific field? Try economics, philosophy, or science RC practice.
Frequently asked questions
How many reading comprehension questions are on the CAT?
In recent CAT exams the VARC section has 24 questions, of which about 16 are reading comprehension questions drawn from four passages. RC accounts for roughly two-thirds of VARC - the highest-leverage area to practice.
Is CAT reading comprehension a vocabulary test?
No. CAT RC is a reasoning skill, not a vocabulary quiz. It tests main idea, inference, tone, and paragraph function. Timed practice on dense essays improves accuracy far more than memorising word lists.
How do I practice CAT RC when I have finished the question banks?
Static banks are finite, so serious aspirants exhaust and memorise them. PracticeRC generates unlimited fresh CAT-style passages from any article you paste, so you never run out of new material.
How much time should one CAT RC passage take?
Aim for roughly 8–10 minutes per 500–700 word passage including its questions. Practicing with a timer builds the pacing to attempt all four passages in the section.
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