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Just as an increased number of words for blue indicates increased perception of shades of blue, a large number of words for snow and ice suggest a high awareness of the different kinds of these substances, and linguistic relativity refers to the effect that these differences have on how people think about them. Though the reasons for this may vary, the fact that the Sami have 180 words for snow and ice indicate their sharp awareness of the differences and how they think about the many kinds of snow and ice, as (C) states.

Expert Approach:
The key concept being tested here is linguistic relativity (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), which asserts that language influences people's worldviews and cognition. In this case, linguistic relativity suggests that because Sami people have so many words for snow and ice they are particularly attuned to subtle differences between types of snow and ice. This relationship is clearly expressed in (C), and in none of the other options.If I hadn't remembered what linguistic relativity is, and couldn't quickly pick out (C), I could still eliminate options that could not be explained by the fact that the Sami language has so many words for snow and ice. For example, although (A) initially sounds plausible - I can understand how a population dependent on winter weather would develop a more specific vocabulary for it - their vocabulary could hardly have caused their dependence on winter weather! Similarly, even if harsh winter weather is typical in Scandinavia, as stated in (D), that weather was not spawned by the Sami language. Lastly, (B) is too extreme to be right; I'm an English speaker and can nonetheless notice differences among several types of snow and ice (muddy slush is the worst!). In other words, I could be completely confident that (C) is the correct choice without any knowledge of psychology or sociology - I would just have to read the stem carefully and take it literally. This is one way that some questions on the science sections of the MCAT are more like CARS questions than most people realize. Sometimes it's not about mastery of content so much as it is about thinking critically about the passage, stem, and answer choices.

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